Guardian of Lies

THIRTY-NINE

Just before seven in the evening, Herman and I meet for dinner in the covered patio downstairs at the Sportsmens Lodge.

Herman has checked the public hallway outside our rooms. There was nothing emitting a signal, no listening devices or micro-cams installed, though Herman’s room was bugged and his phone tapped.

Herman brought with him the encrypted cellular phone. He’s found a place to hide it inside the wall behind an air-conditioning register over the bed in his room.

I spend a few minutes in a crowded section of the bar with one ear covered by my hand, the other pressed to the phone talking to Harry back in San Diego.

Harry tells me that he stopped in to see Katia at the hospital in the early afternoon. The sedation had worn off and, according to Harry, she seemed more alert. But still she did not communicate. Harry has found a local neurologist to examine her and perform the duties as treating physician. According to the doctor, Katia is suffering from severe depression in addition to the physical trauma. He explained that this was not unusual given all that she has been through. Harry tells me the doctor is treating her with antidepressant medication and that the marshal’s service is examining every pill and keeping a close eye on her through the hospital staff.

“Considering the fact that Templeton thinks you helped her plunge the knife into Pike, I suppose you can’t blame them,” says Harry.

“I know the phone is encrypted, but maybe we can find something a little less titillating for the government for you and me to talk about.”

“How about the items in question?” says Harry. He means Katia’s camera and the pictures from Colombia.

“Give us time. We just got here.”

“You said less than a week and you’d be back,” says Harry.

“I said I would try.”

“Did you call her mother’s cell phone?” I ask him.

“I did. I called twice this afternoon. I couldn’t understand the Spanish message, but it was the same as all the other times when I called. The message came on after one ring, which I am guessing means the phone is turned off. I’d say she’s not there. Where are you? It sounds like a party,” says Harry.

“I’m in the bar downstairs at the hotel.”

“I thought so. You owe me a vacation when you get back,” he says. “By the way, I’ve run into a snag with the nurse you wanted to hire. The hospital says the doctor’s fine, but they’re not sure about the nurse. They’re worried about liability. They say if she screws up and the patient suffers, they’re afraid the hospital may be on the hook.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them the nurse is just gonna hold Katia’s hand, talk to her in Spanish, and maybe slap the marshal once in a while. I promised them that she wouldn’t be dishing up any meds or doing any surgery, at least not right away.”

“And what did they say?”

“What does any hospital say? They have to check with the administrator who in turn will call the local legal brain trust, which means that by noon tomorrow we’ll be told that the nurse is out.”

“Stop with the negative brain waves,” I tell him. “We could always dress her up in civilian clothes and call her a relative. If the nurse won’t do it, we can find a Spanish-speaking female PI. We just want a warm body in the room, somebody to keep an eye on Katia.”

“Three shifts a day?” says Harry. “That’s a lot of relatives for somebody who’s in the country on a visa.”

“Yeah, well, it is Southern California, and we are only ten minutes from the border.”

“If I listen to you, Rhytag’s gonna have half the local nurses’ registry on ice with immigration within a week. Let me think about it,” says Harry.

“Where are you right now?” I ask.

“If you really want to know, I’m in my backyard standing under a tree in my underwear.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. I tried to call you twice. Your phone was turned off. I was on the john when you called. I thought it best that I step outside since half the federal workforce is listening in every time I pass gas or flush the toilet.”

I tell him about the rooms being wired and the attempt by the feds to grab the phone at the airport.

“Don’t change the subject,” says Harry. “You’re still the one down there in a bar with all the squealing voices in the background, while I’m standing around my yard in boxer shorts.”

“I’m just telling you to keep an eye on your cell phone. They’ll snatch it if they can.”

“At the moment it’s tied to a string around my naked neck,” he says. “You know, the thought has crossed my mind that for the moment at least, I don’t need your help to send Rhytag up the flagpole. All I have to do is sit in the conference room and let them listen to one half of an encrypted telephone conversation. And I don’t need a phone to do it.”

“I understand. You’re not happy. I owe you big-time when I get back.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I’m not trying to put any pressure on you. It’s just that if you’re not back here by next Tuesday, the FBI’s gonna be digging up your backyard with a backhoe looking for Nitikin’s bones in the barrel right next to the one holding Jimmy Hoffa. So if you treasure your tulips, you’ll be here.”

“What you’re saying is, don’t waste my time talking on the phone.”

“Right.”

“It’s been fun. Let’s do it again tomorrow night, same time, same place. Wear clothes,” I tell him.

“Leave your phone on,” says Harry.

I punch the button and the line goes dead. The last thing we need is a ringing telephone in the air-conditioning duct over Herman’s bed.

We finish dinner and trek back toward our rooms.

“Be sure and bring your set of picks.”

“Already got ’em,” says Herman. “In my pocket.”

“Ten o’clock sharp. Let’s put the phone back behind the register just in case we run into problems. It’ll be safer there.”

We split up just outside the door to my room. I kill twenty minutes running an empty shower, then leave the noise from the television on until nine thirty, when I turn off the lights and sit in the dark in the chair against the window, the curtains drawn. Every few minutes I check to see if there are any new vehicles parked on the small lane at the back of the hotel. I can see only part of the road, but there is almost no traffic on the narrow stretch of pavement that flanks the zoo. I hear a faint scratch like fingernails brushing the other side of the door to my room. I check my watch. It’s ten o’clock on the dot.

With my running shoes in one hand, I cross the hardwood floor in stocking feet and quietly turn the dead bolt, opening the door. Herman is outside in the hall, his back against the wall, leaning over tying the laces on his shoes.

I silently close the door behind me and join him against the wall, slipping the shoes on my feet.

Neither of us utters a word until we pass through the bar, go down the stairs toward the service area, and are out the door onto the street that borders the zoo.

Herman uses a small piece of duct tape to hold back the spring-loaded bolt on the lock, and then tapes a few thicker pieces onto the edge of the door to wedge it closed. He will have to use a knife to pry it open on the way back. The thick green wooden door has no handle on the outside.

We start to hoof it down the street.

“I hope you know where you’re going,” said Herman.

“I think I can find it.”

The written description given to me by Katia used the name of a local hospital three blocks away, Hospital Calderon Guardia, as the principal point of reference for finding houses or businesses in the area. The directions would lead you to the street where the house was located. Then it would describe the residence with particularity, such as “casa blanca, segundo a la derecha,” the white house, second on the right. It made perfectly good sense once you understood the system, though FedEx was out of luck on home delivery unless they could follow the trail of bread crumbs to your front door.

Half a block down, along the fence bordering the zoo, the thick overhead canopy of trees turned the lane into a dark tomb. By now the last streetlight is well behind us, above the green wooden door to the lodge. Ahead is nothing but blackness and the exotic sounds of the bush beyond the fence off to our left. Suddenly there is a guttural, low growl that is unmistakable, and not far off.

“When the woman at the counter said it wasn’t safe to walk at night, I thought she was talkin’ about the locals.” Herman is laughing. “Not some lion who’s gonna be pickin’ his teeth with my tibia because we took a wrong turn at the zoo.”

“Let’s hope he’s on the other side of the fence.”

Herman pulls a Mini Maglite from his pocket, twists the lens, and gives us a narrow beam of light on the pavement so we don’t break our necks.

“You think the light’s gonna scare him?”

“I hear they’re afraid of fire,” he says.

“Fire is a match. He’d swallow that like a Twinkie.”

“I’m not scared,” says Herman. “All I have to do is outrun you.”

“You can’t fool me. I saw your dinner-two steaks and four eggs. If that poor thing is out on the road, we both know who’s gonna get eaten and it won’t be me. All I want is the fur for the floor in front of my fireplace,” I tell him.

“Here we are arguing and it’s the FBI who’s in trouble,” he says. “How are they gonna explain how the two Americans they were tailing got eaten by a lion behind their hotel, one of them a lawyer, and they didn’t even get pictures?”

“You’re right. Maybe we should have just stepped out the front and asked them for a lift.”

“How do we know they won’t be waiting for us when we get to the house?”

“We don’t.” Herman has a point. Rhytag knows that Katia’s mother took the pictures. By now he would have had time to have one of his people, the agent assigned to the U.S. embassy, locate her residence and either place it under surveillance or try to contact her.

“If Harry’s information about her cell phone is accurate, Katia’s mother is still gone,” I tell him.

“Yeah, but they could be watching her house, especially now that they know we’re in town. And only two blocks away from where the woman lives,” says Herman.

“We’ll just have to play it by ear. I don’t know what else to do.”

In the dark, with only a narrow shaft of light to guide us, it takes almost ten minutes before we figure out our mistake, and then only after passing it three times.

Seen from above through the satellite photos on Google Earth, what appeared to be a normal conjunction of two streets was not an intersection at all.

The street that Katia lived on appears to dead-end at a railing about thirty feet above the level of the road Herman and I are walking on. It can only be reached by a set of uneven concrete steps, cracked in places, quite steep and difficult to navigate, particularly in the dark with only a flashlight to guide us.

As we reach the top of the steps, Herman turns off the Mini Maglite. We stand for a few seconds in the shadows and reconnoiter the houses and cars along the block. They are backlit by overhead lights in the distance, at the far end of the street.

Katia’s elaborate address, the written directions for finding the house, were crafted for approach by vehicle from the other end of the block; the white house, second on the right, now on our left. I can see it clearly from where we stand. The entire front of the structure is lit up by a streetlight mounted on a telephone pole directly in front of the house.

All the houses on the block front directly onto a narrow sidewalk on each side of the street, several of them with bushes and vines invading the sidewalk. The roadway itself is wide enough for only a single car, so that several of them are parked partway on the sidewalk.

I point out Katia’s house to Herman.

“I see it.” At the moment he is more interested in several cars parked on each side, from here to the end of the block. We start to walk.

As we reach the house at the other end of the block, I tell him, “It’s the first arched gate.”

Herman turns his head and takes a look. By the time we get to the end of the block, Herman seems satisfied that all of the cars are empty. Still, he keeps walking around the corner to the right as if we are leaving the area. I follow him.

Ten feet around the corner he stops. “I don’t like it. Too much light from that pole,” he says.

I step back to the corner again so I can see. Herman is right. The entrance is lit up like a spotlight on a stage, with the streetlight directly above the locked gate leading to the front door. A car turning the corner or somebody walking down the street is going to see us in a heartbeat, standing out in front working on the lock.

I step back to where he is standing. “I don’t know of any other way in,” I tell him.

“I’m just gonna have to work fast,” he says. “Can you whistle?”

“What?”

“Can you whistle? You know, like the lady said, put your lips together and blow?”

I try it. My lips are dry and nothing comes out. I lick them and try again. This time I get a weak whistle.

“It’ll have to do,” says Herman. “I want you to stay here. You see a car comin’ or anybody walking this direction you whistle. And make it loud enough so I can hear it.” He pulls a small black plastic case from his pocket, opens it, and selects a lock pick and another tiny curved tool of some kind.

“What if somebody comes from the other end of the street, up the steps?” I say.

“You’d have to be crazy to walk there in the dark,” says Herman.

“We just did.”

“Yeah, but the locals aren’t stupid.” Herman smiles at me. “Just remember to whistle, and make it loud so I can hear it.”

Before I can wet my lips again, Herman is back around the corner and down the sidewalk. I watch as he crosses the street on a diagonal and walks to the far end of the house and directly up to the arched gate. Hunched over, with his back to me, he starts working with the pick on the lock.

It was the problem with a lot of the countries in Latin America; even if they had access to natural gas they never developed the infrastructure, the pumping stations, and the underground pipes to deliver it, at least not for domestic use.

Fortunately for him, the kitchen Liquida was in this evening had a nice new gas stove. It was hooked up to a large propane tank. He was guessing close to a thousand gallons. The tank was situated in an area that had once been a garage at the back of the place. As far as he was concerned, it was as good as natural gas. In fact, it was probably better. Propane burned faster and hotter than natural gas and was therefore more efficient. It took less time to cook or, for that matter, to do other things.

Tonight it was one of those other things that Liquida was working on. He had easily slid the stove out and turned off the gas valve where the line came out of the wall. He unscrewed the nut holding the compression fitting from the copper line feeding propane into the stove and was busy installing the small unit that was not much bigger than a deck of cards. It had two quarter-inch copper tubes coming out of each end, both with compression fittings. He screwed one end to the propane line coming out of the wall and the other end to the feed line into the stove. He tightened the fittings with a wrench. When he was satisfied that they were snug, he turned the valve and listened for any hissing of gas. It was silent. He sniffed the air close to the unit-nothing.

Then he picked up the small set of controls from the countertop where he had left it. There were all kinds of buttons and switches, along with a tiny joystick toggle. The unit was designed to control model airplanes in flight. But Liquida cared about only two of the buttons. He pressed one of them and listened once more. This time there was the distinctive hiss of gas as propane leaked from a hole in the side of the little box. Some of the vapor turned to liquid dripping from the hole as it continued to run. He pressed the button again and the hissing sound stopped. He reached down, wiped away the liquid, and watched the small hole. There was no more dripping. Liquida smiled; another job well done.

Herman was hunched over the lock cylinder in the gate with the tension wrench, holding back four of the pins. He was working on the last one, feeling for it with the pick, when suddenly there was a loud whistle from the corner behind him, at the end of the block.

“Shit!” Herman whispered under his breath. He looked back over his shoulder while trying not to pull the tiny tools from the lock. Paul was standing at the corner motioning, drawing one hand with his finger out stretched across his throat, a sign to cut and run. A second later the bright beam of headlights lit him up from behind.

Herman pulled the pick and the wrench from the lock, put his hands in his pockets, and started walking casually back toward the corner where Paul was standing. For an instant the oncoming headlights blinded him as the car turned the corner. It slowed as the driver turned to look, checking Herman out closely. Then the car drove on down the street. It slowed again as the motorized metal doors on a garage in front of a house two doors down from Katia’s started to grind and squeak as they opened. Herman continued to walk and watch as the car pulled into the garage and the doors reversed the groaning and closed behind it.

By then Herman had reached Paul, at the corner.

“Damn it. I almost had it.”

“You told me to warn you.”

“I know. She took a good look when she went by. I doubt they get a lot of walkin’ traffic at night on this street. Bein’ a dead end and all,” says Herman. “We better give it a couple of minutes so she’s not peeking through the front window when I go back.”

Liquida was sliding the stove back into place when he heard a noise out on the front street. He stopped and listened. A car went by, headlights flashing as they blazed past the window in the dining room. He left the stove where it was and headed for the window, which was about six or eight steps up on a landing where the stairs turned and went up to the bedrooms on the second story. The view out was partially obscured by a thorny bush whose branches wound their way through the wrought-iron metal bars that guarded the window on the outside.

By the time Liquida looked out, the car was gone. But as he looked the other way, to the left, he saw a man walking away, crossing the street. The guy was huge, a black man, bald as a cue ball, with shoulders like a bull. If he was Tico he was on supersteroids.

The man was nearing the walkway on the other side of the street. Liquida was just about to turn from the window when another man stepped from the shadows near the corner. The two of them stopped to talk.

Liquida looked at his watch. Twenty minutes to eleven. It was a strange time for a conversation out on the street, too late to be coming home from work and too early for the bars to have closed. When he looked back the two men were gone.

He thought about it for a moment, then went back to the kitchen and finished sliding the stove back into place. He checked to make sure that everything looked just right. It probably didn’t matter. By the time she arrived in the morning, if everything went as planned, she would never have a chance to make it to the kitchen. He would snag her at the front door with the chloroform. He would then arrange her on the floor in front of the stove for her accident. They would find her bones mixed in with all the ashes, probably under the house where the stove would have burned through the floor. And they would never think anything more about it.

After all, this was not the United States where authorities had gadgets to sniff the air and endless money to sift all the debris through screens looking for the reason the gas had exploded. By then, the little plastic box in the back would be vaporized, its metal parts, like everything else that was once part of the house, now just pieces of charred junk to be shoveled into the back of a truck and hauled away.

Liquida was putting away his wrench and closing the lid on his small plastic tool container when he heard a noise again. He glanced back at the window. This time there was no car out on the street. The noise came from out near the front door. He listened. Then he heard it again.

He slid the small toolbox into his left pocket, pulled the knife from the other pocket, and punched the levered button on the side of the handle. The needle-sharp blade snapped open.

Liquida stepped silently through the dining room, then cut through the corner of the living room into the entry, where he pressed himself against the wall next to the entrance to a small powder room near the front door. He stood inches off to the side of the entrance, the knife drawn up in his left hand, close to his ear, ready to be thrust the instant the door opened.

Whoever it was didn’t have a key. They were scratching at the lock with a pick, working on the wrought-iron gate outside. The gate formed a barrier leading to a small exterior entry area maybe four or five feet square. Once through the gate, whoever was there would be in the shadows of the entry area, free to work on the lock at the front door.

Liquida glanced at the inside of the door. It was solid enough, thick tropical hardwood of some kind, but the lock and handle assembly was cheap and very old. It wouldn’t hold for more than a few seconds. Liquida knew this because it was the same way he had entered.

There was a small rectangular viewing port cut at eye level in the wood of the door. The port was open, uncovered on the inside, and protected only by a small brass grid on the outside.

Liquida took a chance and glanced quickly through the opening. The man outside the gate was bent over, looking down, working on the lock. Liquida couldn’t see his face but he could see the bald head and broad shoulders. It was the man he had seen crossing the street. Liquida was sure of it.

He pressed his head back against the wall and thought for a moment. He considered the razor-sharp blade in his hand, and weighed it against the size of the man outside. Even if he could kill him, how would he dispose of the body? Authorities wouldn’t think twice about a woman who died in her own house in an accidental fire. But an unidentified male who died with her would raise questions. And what about the other man, up at the corner? Was he still there? If he came down to join his big friend in the house after the locks were picked, Liquida would have his hands full.

He listened as the sharp metal worked the lock in the gate outside. If he was going to do anything, he had to do it now. His eyes scoured the entry area for something, anything he could use to drive the man away. But it was the back of Liquida’s right arm and his elbow scratching something on the wall behind him that found the answer. He moved quietly away from the wall, turned, and looked down. There was a plastic cover plate and two light switches mounted on the wall between the front door and the door to the bathroom. He leaned into the bathroom and checked the wall inside with his right hand. There was no switch on the wall. Liquida guessed that the switch on the right, outside the door, was for the light in the bathroom. The other switch had to be an entry light. There was no overhead light in the interior entry itself, just a floor lamp in one corner. It was possible that the switch turned on the lamp.

Liquida eased over and looked through the port in the front door one more time, just as the locked bolt snapped open on the metal gate. There was an overhead light in the ceiling of the entry area outside. Liquida reached over and flipped the switch.

“Oh, shit!”

Liquida heard the tinkle of metal on the concrete walkway out front, and then footsteps as the man retreated from the wrought-iron gate.

Liquida smiled. In his panic the big one had dropped his lock pick. He listened as the loud sound of rubber soles slapping concrete on the street diminished into the distance toward the dark stairs at the dead end of the street.

By the time he turned off the entrance light and opened the front door, the man had disappeared into the darkness. Liquida could still hear the faint sound of the man’s heavy footfalls as he ran. He waited several seconds, until the sounds disappeared in the distance. Then he swung open the gate and stepped out onto the sidewalk, under the streetlight. He looked down, then stooped to the cement and pinched the tiny lock pick between his fingers. He stood up and looked in the other direction, toward the corner where he had seen the two men talking earlier. The other guy was gone. Or else he was hiding around the corner. Liquida figured he couldn’t have gotten far. If they had a car it would be in the other direction, where the big man ran when the light went on. Instinct would drive him toward safety. And there was no way for his friend to have joined him. Liquida had him cut off.

He moved quickly back into the house. This time he didn’t bother to lock or even close the gate behind him. He wouldn’t be there that long.