Guardian of Lies

FORTY

As Herman works the lock, I stand at the corner. It’s taking longer than I thought it would, and my attention begins to wander.

As I look around, I suddenly realize that if things go bad, there are no yards to hide in or fences that can be jumped easily. As far as I can see, in every direction the buildings all butt up against one another. There are a few gated side yards and two high iron fences, but all of them are guarded by large rolls of razor wire coiled and stretched along the top.

I look away and am thinking that they must have a problem with home security in Costa Rica when suddenly I hear Herman’s voice saying something unpleasant.

By the time I look back, Herman is moving away from the gate. The next thing I know, he turns, running in full flight, down the street and away from me, toward the darkness and the stairs at the other end.

I can’t tell what has happened. My first instinct is to follow him. Herman must have managed to pick the lock, because the gate at the front of the house is open just slightly. Then I notice the hand gripping one of the wrought-iron bars.

Without even thinking I seem to levitate back around the corner until I find myself on one knee, peeking around the stucco siding. Whoever is coming out of the house is now between Herman and me. There is no way I can follow Herman, and nowhere to hide.

It was, of course, possible that the two men had selected this house under the bright streetlight, and this night, for a random burglary. But Liquida was never one to embrace coincidence. It was the reason he had stayed alive so long.

To Liquida there was only one other person who knew he would be here, his employer. He had taken pains to inform the man that because of previous commitments, he wouldn’t be able to make it to the woman’s house in San José until the following evening. He remembered because his employer, the man in Colombia, wrote back to confirm this.

By now I am down on my stomach on the sidewalk, peering with one eye around the corner of the building across the street, watching the entrance to Katia’s house.

My mind is racing. All I can see is the hand gripping the iron bar on the gate. If it is a woman, it might be Katia’s mother. It is possible she has arrived home and Harry was wrong. Perhaps her cell phone is out of order.

If she steps out onto the sidewalk, if I could be sure it’s her, I might take a chance and approach her, try to introduce myself in the hope that somehow she might have gotten word that her daughter is in trouble in the States.

I’m hoping that her English might be better than my Spanish when the gate suddenly opens and a man steps out. He is lit from head to toe under the blaring gaze of the streetlight, looking the other way, toward the dark end of the street where Herman has disappeared.

I’m studying him when suddenly and without warning he turns and looks directly at the corner of the building where I am hiding. I pull my head back close to the edge of the house and hold my breath. I can’t be sure if he’s seen me. If he hasn’t, it is only because I am close to the ground and his eyes are searching up higher. Still, I have the feeling, the way he snaps his head in my direction and looks over here, that somehow he knows I am here.

It is possible he might be one of Rhytag’s agents, but not likely. If the FBI is camped in the house, perhaps with the assistance of the Costa Rican police, they would have allowed Herman to enter and then bagged him to find out what he was after.

Katia never mentioned any male residents in the house. So who the hell is he? I take a chance. With my chin on the concrete, I edge toward the corner of the building until my right eye clears it. The man is bent over, picking something up off the ground. Then he suddenly disappears, back into the house. But he doesn’t close the gate, he leaves it ajar, which means he’s coming back.

I stand up and start to collect my thoughts, realizing that if he comes this way, I’m going to be out on the sidewalk all alone, with nowhere to hide. I try to check off in my mind the routes on the map that would take me back to the Sportsmens Lodge.

I could turn and run down the street behind me. It’s well lit. At the next corner, if I turn right and run another block, by the time I got to the end of the street I should be almost at the front entrance to the lodge. That’s if I read the map correctly. If the FBI was set up out in front, they couldn’t miss me.

Or I could go in the opposite direction, across the street and up one block. I know with certainty what lies in that direction: the fence that bounds the zoo and the winding lane that runs alongside it. It would be dark as pitch, but if I followed the lane it would loop around and take me past the stairs at the other end of Katia’s street, where Herman disappeared. Retrace my steps a few hundred yards farther on and I would come to the green door at the back of the Sportsmens Lodge.

Without thinking twice I bolt across the street and dodge behind the corner of the house on the other side. I stop for a second to catch my breath and try to dismiss the thought that he might have been watching through one of the windows when I broke cover.

Liquida moved quickly to straighten up the last few items in the kitchen as his mind continued to nibble at the notion that the man who hired him had tried to set him up.

Of course, this was not necessarily a surprise. Liquida never trusted any of the people he worked for. After all, they were not saints, or even the distant relatives of saints. They were hiring him to kill others who had become inconvenient to them. The only saving grace was that for the most part the victims were no better than the people who hired Liquida to kill them. Of course, this was not exactly something to commend you for membership in the local Rotary Club. And it always begged the question of whether Liquida himself might be seen as an inconvenience at some point. This had happened only twice. The two wayward employers could now be found residing in the northern desert of Mexico; that is, if you knew where to dig.

But to Liquida this was no sign that he was narrow minded. He could understand if they were trying to eliminate him for reasons of business, to silence him because he knew too much or perhaps even to avoid payment. Mind you, he would kill in a Mexican minute any employer harboring such notions. Still, he could understand their motives.

But the current customer, the man in Colombia, was a different case. Liquida had good reason to dislike him. The man was arrogant, and it showed. Even though Liquida sensed that the interpreter had tried to dull the sting of insults from his master’s words, he could not conceal them. In all of his communications the employer had talked down to Liquida. He had accused him of incompetence for missing the woman at the house that night and for compounding this error by having her arrested for the murder of the man Pike. It was not Liquida’s fault that the woman had picked that night to run. And still the employer had never forgiven him, even after he had fixed the problem during the ambush of the sheriff’s bus.

He finished cleaning up and snatched the two items he had left behind on the countertop, the remote control and the woman’s camera with the photographs. Another task done for which Liquida was certain there would be no appreciation.

He’d had to turn the house upside down looking for the camera. But he had found it. Who the hell leaves a camera on a shelf in the laundry room? He had already checked the images in the camera’s view screen. The pictures were still there inside, the same ones Liquida had seen on the computer screen the night he killed the man at the photo lab in Virginia. He had done everything he was asked to do and he had done it well. And in the morning, when the woman’s mother arrived home, she would be greeted by Liquida and his carefully prepared accident. What more could the man in Colombia ask?

This man had no appreciation of the work Liquida had done. Now he had sent two of his minions to set him up. Liquida would teach him a lesson he would not soon forget. He hurried toward the front door and the open gate while there was still time.

I am still at the corner catching my breath, trying to guess the distance to the lodge from here, perhaps a mile, maybe more, when I hear the slam of the metal gate.

I sneak a look. The guy is back outside, down on one knee at the gate. On the sidewalk next to him are some items. At this distance I can’t make out what they are.

He doesn’t have a key. He is working the lock the same way Herman had, and seems to be talking to himself as he does it. I can almost hear his voice. It is as if he’s arguing with someone. He was no FBI agent, that was certain. And his chances of being a social guest diminish considerably as I watch him pick the lock on the gate to close up. I don’t know if he is more skilled than Herman, but I have to admit he is faster, which probably means that he’s had more practice.

He is finishing up, putting the pick back in a container. I start to look around for places to hide. If he walks this way, I am in trouble. There is a car parked at the curb, maybe forty feet behind me; some thin, straggly bushes; and a long-abandoned, rusted set of railroad tracks across the street.

I stand up, and when I peer around the corner again he has finished and is on his feet. He gathers the objects from the sidewalk and, just when I think I might have to run, he turns away and walks in the opposite direction, down the street and away from me. I step away from the corner, take a deep breath, and hold my chest. Harry was right. I should have stayed home.

Then it strikes me that maybe he is going after Herman. If he is, he is taking his time. Just when I think I have it knocked, I hear a car door slam and then an engine start, and before I look around the corner, the screech of tires. The beam of the headlights nearly catches me looking around the edge of the building. He is screaming up the street directly at me.

I turn and run as fast as I can for the car at the curb. I know I have no chance.

When I turn back and look, he is stopped at the corner, gunning the engine and hitting the brake, inching forward in jumps, looking the other way. I glimpse the back of his head as I dive for the gutter behind the parked car.

The few seconds as he looked the wrong way were the difference. By the time he turned to look toward me, I was already in the deep gully where the paved road dipped down to meet the high curb of the sidewalk. As I lie hiding in the shadows, looking through the slight gap between the rear tire and the curb, I see his face. He scans the sidewalk in my direction as far as he can, and then turns his eyes on the car I am hiding behind. He studies the windshield for a long moment, takes out a small flashlight, and shoots the beam toward the front of the car. I duck down as best I can, trying to make myself smaller to hide behind the rear wheel.

I can’t see him any longer, but I can see the tires of his car as they move out into the intersection and turn this way. The wheels inch forward as pieces of loose gravel pop under the weight and the friction of his tires. I can hear the muted sounds of salsa as it plays on the radio inside his car. I slide forward on my stomach under the car as his wheels roll slowly this way. He edges in close, along the side of the car.

I glance back. My feet have just passed under the rear bumper as I continue to wiggle forward. I hear the slight hum of the electric motor and whish of the glass as the driver’s side window rolls down. The brassy sound and beat of salsa spills out all over the street. The music drowns out any noise I might make as I inch forward under the car.

I know what he is doing. He is peering through the side windows with his flashlight, checking the car’s interior, making sure there is no one inside. If I could only get him to move a few blocks away and try it again, he might be greeted by the flash of nine-millimeter muzzles and the FBI. Something tells me there is a connection here if I could only figure it out.

He rolls forward a few inches. A second later the sound of the music diminishes as the window closes. If he keeps going forward and looks in his mirror, or drives to the corner and turns around, I am dead. He would see me silhouetted under the car, backlit by the overhead lights down the street.

As this thought enters my brain, he guns the engine. His rear wheels squeal. My nostrils fill with the acrid odor of burnt rubber as his car chatters sideways for half a beat before it shoots back down the street in reverse. He throws the rear end into the opening at Katia’s street and in a single fluid motion makes a three-point turn and speeds off in the other direction. I watch as his brake lights flare at the next intersection. He slows for a few seconds and looks in both directions, down to the right toward the Sportsmens Lodge, and up to the left toward the hospital.

The brake lights dim and he shoots straight ahead, down the hill. The road curves to the right and he disappears around the bend.

I crawl out from under the car. I don’t stop to brush off my clothes. Instead I begin to run faster and faster into the darkness under the trees near the fence at the zoo. My heart is pounding. I turn and fall against the chain link, leaning with all of my weight as I catch my breath. Then I make my way slowly in the dark along the twisting lane. I can’t run, though I want to. In the pitch-black under the shadows of the trees, I would break my neck.

I am passing the first intersection when suddenly I see the lights of a vehicle winding its way along the lane, coming toward me. I look for somewhere to hide. There are some scrub bushes along the fence near the gnarled trunk of a eucalyptus tree. I make my way to the tree and position myself between the trunk and the fence and watch the headlights, trying to keep the tree between myself and the twin beams of light as the car approaches.

It isn’t until the flare of the bright light is past me that I can see the windows of the taxi and Herman in the backseat with the window down and looking out the other side.

“Herman! Here.” I step out into the street.

“Alto. Aquí,” says Herman.

The taxi driver throws on the brakes.

I run up along the right side of the car and get in the front seat. “Go,” I tell him. A second later we are moving.

“I waited for ya at the top of the stairs,” says Herman. “I saw the guy come outside. Then when he went in I saw you run across the street. But I wasn’t sure how to get to you. I figured the best way was to get a cab. Is he still at the house?”

“No.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you see?”

“A visitation from the angel of death,” I tell him.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw him up close for only an instant. He was behind a car window. But it was a face I won’t forget. It was pockmarked, one side of it, not the usual adolescent acne. It was something more sinister. Maybe smallpox or fire scarred, I couldn’t tell.”

“Funny you should say that. When I was at the gate working on the lock, I had a real edgy feeling, like somebody or something was lookin’ at me, and not just lookin’, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” I don’t tell Herman, but the reason I couldn’t look more closely at his face was because my focus was drawn to something in the eyes. It is hard to explain, something you have to see to understand, a kind of reflection of evil.

I have seen that look before. As a young prosecutor in Capitol City, I had sent someone with those same haunted eyes to prison. He was a man who had killed many times, and according to the doctors, he liked to do it, and given the chance would do it again. I remember some years later I stood on the riser and looked through the blinds, through the plate-glass window of a green metal room. I watched as the demons were drawn and exorcised from the eyes of Brian Danley, in the fog of the San Quentin gas chamber.