Assumed Identity

5

“Why didn’t Juana bring me to the house?” Continuing to use Spanish, Buchanan repeated the question that Juana’s mother had asked him. “You know, I wondered that myself. I think it was because she wasn’t sure if you and your husband would approve.”

Buchanan was taking a big chance here, but he had to do something to distract her from her suspicion. Something was wrong, and he didn’t know what, but he thought if he put her on the defensive about one thing, she might open up about other things.

“Why wouldn’t we approve?” Juana’s mother asked. Her dark eyes flashed with barely controlled indignation. “Because you’re white? That’s crazy. Half my husband’s employees are white. Many of Juana’s high school friends were white. Juana knows we’re not prejudiced.”

“I’m sorry. That isn’t what I meant. I didn’t intend to insult you. Juana told me-in fact, she emphasized-that you didn’t have any objection if she dated someone who wasn’t Hispanic.”

“Then why wouldn’t we have approved of you?” Juana’s mother’s dark eyes flashed again.

“Because I’m not Catholic.”

“. . Oh.” The woman’s voice dropped.

“Juana said you’d told her many times that was one thing you expected of her. . that if she got serious about a man, he would have to be a Catholic. . because you wanted to be certain that your grandchildren would be raised in the Church.”

“Yes.” Juana’s mother swallowed. “That is true. I told her that often. Apparently, you do know her well.”

In the background, a man’s gruff voice interrupted. “Anita, who are you talking to? What’s taking you so long?”

Juana’s mother glanced down the hallway toward the entrance to the living room. “Wait here,” she told Buchanan and closed the door.

Feeling exposed, Buchanan heard muffled words.

Juana’s mother returned. “Please, come in.”

She didn’t sound happy about the invitation, though, and she didn’t look happy as she locked the door behind them and escorted Buchanan into the living room.

It was connected via an archway to the kitchen, and immediately Buchanan smelled the lingering fragrance of oil, spices, onions, and peppers from dinner. The room had too much furniture, mostly padded chairs and various wooden tables. A crucifix hung on the wall. A short, heavy-chested, fiftyish man with pitch-black hair and darker eyes than his wife sat in a LaZ-Boy recliner. His face was round but craggy. He wore work shoes and a blue coverall that had a patch-MENDEZ MECHANICS. Buchanan remembered that Juana had told him about the six garages her father owned throughout the city. The man was smoking a cigar and holding a bottle of Corona beer.

“Who are you?” It was difficult to hear him because of the laughter from the television.

“As I told your wife, my name is. .”

“Yes. Jeff Walker. Who are you? ”

Buchanan frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

Juana’s mother fidgeted.

“I’m a friend of your daughter,” Buchanan said.

“So you claim.” The man looked nervous. “When is her birthday?”

“Why on earth would. .?”

“Just answer the question. If you’re as good a friend as you say, you’ll know when she has her birthday.”. .

“Well?”

“As I recall, it’s in May. The tenth.” Buchanan remembered it because six years previously he and Juana had started working together in May. Under the pretense of being husband and wife in New Orleans, they’d made a big deal about her birthday on the tenth.

“Anybody could look that up in a file. Does she have any allergies?”

“Senor Mendez, what’s this about? I haven’t seen her in several years. It’s very hard to remember if. .”

“That’s what I thought.”

“But I recall she had a problem with cilantro. That always surprised me, her being allergic to an herb that’s used so often in Hispanic cooking.”

“Birthmarks?”

“This is. .”

“Answer the question.”

“There’s a scar on the back of her right leg, up high, near her hip. She said she got it when she was a kid, climbing over a barbed-wire fence. What’s next? Are you going to ask me how I saw the scar? I think I made a mistake. I think I shouldn’t have come here. I think I should have gone to some of Juana’s friends to see if they knew where I could find her.”

As Buchanan turned toward the door, Juana’s mother said sharply, “Pedro.”

“Wait,” the father said. “Please. If you’re truly a friend of my daughter, stay.”

Buchanan studied him, then nodded.

“I asked you those questions because. .” Pedro seemed in turmoil. “You’re the fourth friend of Juana to ask where she was in the past two weeks.”

Buchanan didn’t show his surprise. “The fourth. .?”

“Is she in trouble?” Anita’s voice was taut with anxiety.

“Like you, each of them was white,” Pedro said. “Each was male. Each hadn’t seen her in several years. But unlike you, they didn’t have any personal knowledge about her. One of them claimed that he’d served with her at Fort Bragg. But Juana was never assigned to Fort Bragg.”

That was wrong, Buchanan knew. Although Juana’s cover military assignment had been at Fort Sam Houston, her actual assignment had been through Fort Bragg. But her parents would never have known that because Juana would never have broken cover to tell them. So they naturally thought that the man who had claimed to be Juana’s friend was lying when he claimed that he’d known Juana at Bragg. Quite the contrary: The man was telling a version of the truth. Whoever he was, he knew Juana’s background in detail. But he had made a mistake in assuming that her parents would also know it.

Juana’s father continued. “Another supposed friend claimed that he had known Juana at college here in San Antonio. When I asked which one, he looked confused. He didn’t seem to know that she had transferred from Our Lady of the Lake University to St. Mary’s University. Anyone who knew her well would have known that information.”

Buchanan mentally agreed. Somebody had fucked up and skimmed through her file instead of reading it in detail.

“The third supposed friend,” Pedro said, “claimed that, like you, he had dated her when they worked together here at Fort Sam Houston, but when we asked why we had never met him-since Juana brought most of her boyfriends to see us- he didn’t have an explanation. At least, you did, just as you actually seem to know personal things about her. So I will ask you again. . Jeff Walker. . is our daughter in trouble?”

Juana’s mother waited, clutching the sides of her dress.

Buchanan had a difficult, quick decision to make. Pedro was inviting him into their confidence. Or maybe Pedro was offering bait. If Buchanan admitted his true intentions, Pedro might very well suspect that Buchanan was yet another impersonator sent by Juana’s enemies to find her.

He decided to take the gamble. “I think so.”

Pedro exhaled as if he was finally hearing what he wanted, even though the knowledge dismayed him.

“I knew it,” Juana’s mother said. “What kind of trouble? Tell us. We’ve been worried to death about. .”

“Anita, please, no talk about death.” Pedro squinted toward Buchanan and repeated the question that his wife had asked. “What kind of trouble?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here,” Buchanan said. “Last week, I received a message that she needed to see me. The message was vague, as if she didn’t want anyone else to read it and figure out what she was telling me. But I could figure it out. She desperately needed help. There’s a place in New Orleans that was special to us. Without mentioning it, she asked me-begged me, really-to meet her there at the same time and date we’d last been there. That would have been at eleven P.M. on Halloween. But she didn’t show up that night or the night after. Obviously, something’s wrong. That’s why I came here. Because you were the only people I could think of to try to establish contact with her. I figured that you of all people would have some idea what was going on.”

Neither Pedro nor Anita said anything.

Buchanan gave them time.

“No,” Anita said.

Buchanan gave them more time.

“We don’t know anything,” Anita said. “Except that we’ve been worried because she hasn’t been behaving normally.”

“How?”

“We haven’t heard from her in nine months. Usually, even when she’s on the road, she phones at least once a week. She did say she’d be away for a while. But nine months?”

“What does she do for a living?”

Pedro and Anita looked uncertain.

“You don’t know?”

“It’s something to do with security,” Pedro said.

“National security?”

“Private security. She has her own business here in San Antonio. But that’s as much as Juana told us. She never discussed specifics. She said that it wouldn’t be fair to her clients. She couldn’t violate their confidence.”

Good, Buchanan thought. She stayed a pro.

“All right,” he said, “so she hasn’t been in touch in nine months. And suddenly several men who claim to be old friends of hers show up to ask if you know where they can find her. What else isn’t-?”

Abruptly Buchanan noticed that Juana’s parents were looking at him differently. Their gaze was harder, more wary, their need to confess their concerns about their daughter now tempered by renewed suspicion about him. The risk he’d taken had finally caught up to him. His remark about the other men who’d come looking for her had prompted Juana’s parents to associate him with those men.

But he was troubled by something else. The intensity of his headache had made him temporarily relax his guard. If an enemy was trying to find Juana and if that enemy was impatient enough to send three different men to ask Juana’s parents about where she could be found, might not that enemy have gone further in an effort to learn what the parents knew? Might not that enemy have. .?

“Excuse me. May I use your bathroom?”

Pedro’s suspicion made him look surly. He nodded grudgingly. “It’s down the hall. The first door on the left.”

“Thank you.”

Buchanan stood, feigning self-consciousness, and went along the hallway. In the bathroom, which was bright, white, and extremely ordered, he locked the door, strained to get some urine from his bladder, flushed the toilet, and turned on the sink to wash his hands.

He left the water running, silently opened the medicine cabinet, found a nail file, and used it to unscrew the wall plate to the light switch. Taking care not to touch the wires, he unscrewed the switch from its cavity in the wall and pulled it out to study what was behind.

His discovery increased the nausea that his headache caused. A miniature microphone-transmitter was attached to the wires. Because most people felt that a bathroom gave them privacy, that was the room they’d least likely suspect had a bug, hence the first room that Buchanan always checked. And because Mrs. Mendez kept this bathroom scrupulously clean, about the only place in the room where she wouldn’t find a bug was behind the light switch, a spot favored by professional eavesdroppers. The phones were probably miked, as well.

Okay, Buchanan thought. Here we go.

He shut off the water, the sound of which he had hoped would conceal the noise he’d made when he unscrewed the wall plate. Now he unlocked the bathroom door and went back to the living room, where it was obvious that Juana’s parents had been whispering about him.

“Pedro, I apologize,” Buchanan said.

“For what?”

“When I was washing my hands in the bathroom, I must have pulled the sink plug’s lever too hard. It looks like I broke it. I can’t get the sink to drain, I’m sorry. I. .”

Pedro stood, scowling, and strode toward the bathroom, his chest stuck out, his short legs moving powerfully.

Buchanan got ahead of him in the hallway and put a finger over his own lips to indicate that he wanted Pedro not to say anything. But when Pedro didn’t get the message and opened his mouth to ask what was going on, Buchanan had to put his hand firmly over Pedro’s mouth and shake his head strongly from side to side, mouthing in Spanish the quiet message, Shut up. Pedro looked startled. The house is bugged, Buchanan continued mouthing.

Pedro didn’t seem to understand. He struggled to remove Buchanan’s hand from his mouth. Buchanan responded by pressing his left hand against the back of Pedro’s head while at the same time he continued to keep his right hand over Pedro’s mouth. He forced Pedro into the bathroom and bent his head down so that Pedro could see behind the light switch that Buchanan had pulled from the wall. Pedro owned a string of car-repair shops. He had to be familiar with wiring. Surely Pedro would know enough about other types of wiring to realize that the small gadget behind the light switch shouldn’t be there, that the gadget was a miniature microphone-transmitter.

Pedro’s eyes widened.

Comprende? Buchanan mouthed.

Pedro nodded forcefully.

Buchanan released his grip on Pedro’s head and mouth.

Pedro wiped his mouth, which showed the strong impression of Buchanan’s hand, glared at Buchanan, and rattled the sink plug’s lever. “There. You see, it was nothing. You merely hadn’t pulled the lever far enough. The water’s gone now.”

“At least I didn’t break it,” Buchanan said.

Pedro had several pens and a notepad in the top pocket of his coveralls. Quickly, Buchanan removed the pad and one of the pens. He wrote: We can’t talk in the house. Where and when can we meet? Soon.

Pedro read the message, frowned, and wrote: 7:00 A.M. My shop at 1217 Loma Avenue.

“I do not trust you,” Pedro said abruptly.

“What?” The effect was so convincing that Buchanan took a moment before he realized that Pedro was acting.

“I want you out of my house.”

“But-”

“Get out.” Pedro grabbed Buchanan’s arm and tugged him along the hallway. “How much plainer can I make it? Out of my house.”

“Pedro!” Anita hurried from the living room into the hallway. “What are you doing? Maybe he can help us.”

“Out!” Pedro shoved Buchanan toward the front door.

Buchanan pretended to resist. “Why? I don’t understand. What did I do? A couple of minutes ago, we were talking about how to help Juana. Now all of a sudden. .”

“There is something not right about you,” Pedro said. “There is something too convenient about you. I think that you are with the other men who came to look for Juana. I think that you are her enemy, not her friend. I think that I should never have spoken to you. Get out. Now. Before I call the police.”

Pedro unlocked the door and yanked it open.

“You’ve made a mistake,” Buchanan said.

“No, you did. And you will make a greater mistake if you ever come near my home again.”

“Damn it, if you don’t want my help. .”

“I want you out!” Pedro shoved Buchanan.

Buchanan lurched outside, feeling exposed by the porch light above him. “Don’t touch me again.”

“Pedro!” Anita said.

“I don’t know where my daughter is, but if I did, I would never tell you!” Pedro told Buchanan.

“Then go to hell.”