Guardian of Lies

FORTY-SEVEN

Liquida read the brief account of the fire in the local newspaper the next morning. One fatality, a woman, her identity withheld until they could notify the next of kin.

Later that afternoon, after packing his luggage for the return to Mexico, he took a detour on his way to the airport. He parked the car and took a stroll down the dead-end street. Everything was back to normal, except for the burned-out house two doors from the corner. Someone had swept the glass and debris from the street. The front gate on the house was padlocked, probably to prevent looters from falling into the charred pit that was inside.

Liquida could see all the way up to the sky through the broken windows on the front. All that was left standing were the exterior masonry walls. From what he could see, the interior was totally gutted. The old wood had burned well.

Wearing oversize sunglasses and a baseball cap with the New York Yankees’ logo on it, he walked slowly down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. With his hands in his pockets, he surveyed his handiwork. If he had a camera, he would have taken pictures to send to his employer. The camel jockey was never satisfied.

Liquida walked past the house and ended up three doors down where a woman was dragging a hose and watering some plants in her front yard.

He smiled, then spoke to her in Spanish. “Good afternoon.”

“Hello.” She nodded and smiled back.

“What a shame.” He stood there looking back at the house across the street.

“Yes. It was a very bad fire. And the explosion shook the entire block.”

“Really?” said Liquida.

“Oh, yes. Propano,” she said. “That’s why I don’t have it in my house. It’s too dangerous. Only electricity,” she said. “The fire got so hot it burned the telephone wires.” She pointed to the cables running between the poles across the street.

“I hope no one was hurt.”

“Well, a woman had a heart attack,” she said.

“You mean the woman who lived in the house?” Liquida was surprised there was enough of her left that they could find her heart.

“No, no, not Maricela, the lady next door to her. She was in her eighties. It was probably all the excitement from the explosion. No, the woman who lived in the house was very lucky. She got out.”

Liquida nearly got whiplash turning to look at her.

“Some students up at the beauty school said that two men who were walking up the sidewalk smelled fumes coming from the house. They managed to get inside and one of them carried her out, just before the house blew up.”

Liquida didn’t say anything. He just stood there looking at her as she continued watering her plants.

“Was she hurt?”

“Oh, yes. She was unconscious when they brought her out.”

“So I assume she’s in the hospital?”

“No. One of the men, the one who carried her out, a very big hombre, managed to revive her. Right up there on the sidewalk.” She pointed up the street. “I would say it was a miracle. I was sure she was dead when he brought her out. And his friend, the other man, he didn’t look too good either.”

“What did this man look like?” said Liquida.

“As I said he was very big. A black man.”

Liquida immediately understood. “So what happened to Maricela?”

“Do you know her?”

“No, I just heard you say her name.”

“Oh. I think she left with the two men.”

“So they must have been friends of hers?”

“I don’t think so. They were not locals. I have never seen them before. Americanos, I think.”

“The black man, you say he was big,” said Liquida.

“Mucho grande,” she said.

“Was he bald? Did he have a shiny head?”

“Do you know him?”

“No, but I think I may have seen him around the neighborhood.”

“Then perhaps I am wrong. Maybe they are local. I offered them my house to rest, but Maricela said she wanted to go stay with the mayor.”

“She knows the mayor of San José?” A cold chill ran down Liquida’s spine.

“No.” The woman laughed. “It is a joke. He is a friend. His name is Lorenzo. In the neighborhood some people call him the mayor of Gringo Gulch because he knows everybody and everything. He lives a few blocks down that way.” She gestured with one hand in a general direction toward downtown.

Liquida would have asked her for Lorenzo’s last name, better yet, a map to his house and whether it was hooked up to propane. But to ask more questions was to invite suspicion.

Yesterday afternoon after arriving safely at Lorenzo’s apartment, the trauma of the event finally caught up with Maricela. She collapsed on a couch in his back room and slept all night. By the time she wakes up this morning, it is almost noon.

“I have to tell you, Maricela, I didn’t trust him,” says Goudaz. “And I tried to warn Katia. She wouldn’t listen to me.” He is talking about Emerson Pike. “He was asking too many personal questions. Anybody want a beer?”

Herman raises his hand. “Yeah, I’ll have one.”

“How about you?”

“Not for me,” I say. We are seated around the dining table grabbing a bite, something Goudaz has whipped up, rice and chicken and some black beans. He seems to like to cook. After being under his roof for one night, it is hard to size him up completely. There is a bit of roguish cha risma to the man. You get the sense that he survives in the gap between the two cultures. It is difficult to say what Maricela thinks of him.

For the moment he has his head in the refrigerator. He comes out with two bottles of Imperial, knocks the caps off, and hands one of them to Herman as he takes a swig from the other.

Lorenzo doesn’t move fast, but he seems to get things done. The minute we arrived he found accommodations for us. One of the other tenants in the building is out of town. The mayor has the key and says the man won’t mind. Last night Herman and I sacked out on a bed and a rollaway in the other apartment.

It’s a little tight but it’ll work, at least for a few days, until we can figure out where we’re going. That will depend in large part on what we can find out from Maricela.

This morning I brief her on Katia’s predicament in California. We talk about the photographs from Colombia, Emerson Pike’s obsession with them, and his murder. She wants to know what Pike’s involvement in all of this was. I tell her we’re not sure. I don’t tell her about the FBI or the fact that I am now charged as a codefendant along with her daughter, only that we were interested in recovering the photographs from the camera at her house. But, of course they are now gone, destroyed in the fire.

She tells us that it was, in fact, her father who was in the photographs along with a man she calls Alim and several of his followers, who she believes were responsible for the attack at her house and the fire.

When I ask her where the photographs were taken, she becomes vague. She tells us she was always picked up at a rural bus stop by men in a small truck. It was a very long ride to the village in the jungle where her father was. It took most of a day and sometimes longer depending on the route they took and the condition of the mountain roads. According to Maricela she would often fall asleep and never paid much attention to where they were or their direction of travel.

“What makes you believe this man, Alim, is responsible for what happened at your house?” says Goudaz.

“I’m sure of it,” says Maricela. “He was very threatening. My father was certain he would never allow me to leave, to come home. So he made special arrangements for a man and a woman whom he trusted to accompany me to San José. When we arrived at the airport in Medellín, there was a message waiting for them, some emergency back home and they both had to return.”

“And so you figure Alim was responsible?” says Goudaz.

“Who else?”

“What is your father doing down there?” says the mayor.

“Excuse me, some of this information may be confidential,” I tell him. “Because it may have to do with a pending case. I know we’ve barged in on you without warning and I apologize for that, but I wonder if we could have just a few minutes alone.”

“Sure, I’m sorry,” says Goudaz. “I didn’t realize. Listen, you take all the time you need. I’ve got work to do in the study. Call me if you need me.”

“Thanks.”

He disappears down the hall and closes the door to the study.

“Thank you,” she says. “Lorenzo is a good friend, but he has a habit of making other people’s business his own.”

“I noticed,” I tell her. “You said Alim and his followers didn’t speak Spanish.”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you have any idea where they were from?”

“The country, no. The area, I believe, is the Middle East. Several times each day they would get down on their knees and pray, always with their heads toward the east.”

“So they were Muslim?” I say.

“I think so.”

Maricela tells Herman and me that her father has always been very secretive. He was absent for large periods of her life when she was a child, and he refused to tell her anything about what he was doing in Colombia. She doesn’t believe he is involved in any way with drugs, so she has dismissed this from the range of possibilities. All she knows is that whatever the project is, it is nearing completion. This was the reason he sent her home. He told her that he would be leaving Colombia shortly and would not be back. She got the very clear sense that it was to be their last visit.

The thought of never seeing him again, followed by the events at her house, has left her emotionally fragile. Trying to probe for details is difficult.

We talk for a while about what she saw when she was there in the encampment. There were a large number of men, most of them young, some of them children, along with young women in uniforms, many of them carrying rifles. She doesn’t believe they were part of the Colombian army and therefore were probably rebels. She knows that Colombia has for many years been involved in a revolution. Her father seemed to know many of these people and none of them seemed to be a threat to him, only Alim and his followers.

Suddenly she sits bolt upright in the chair. “Oh, my God, I forgot.” She stands and starts feeling in the pockets of her pants as if maybe she’s lost her keys or something.

“What is it?”

“It’s ah, something…someone gave me. I hope I didn’t lose it. With the fire and everything, I forgot.” She’s riffling through each pocket.

“What was it?” says Herman.

“Just a note.” She feels something in her right-front pocket. She reaches in, and when her hand comes out, she is holding a small folded piece of paper. “Thank God.” She takes a deep breath, turns her back for a moment, and walks a few steps from the table as she unfolds the note. It appears to be about the size of a single half sheet of paper, and I see what looks like handwriting in pencil on the page. As she reads Maricela keeps her back to us.

Herman and I look at each other.

“If it’s something that would help Katia, we need to know about it,” I tell her.

When she finishes she drops her hand to her side, still clutching the paper tightly. When she turns and looks at us, there are tears running down her cheeks. “What is today?”

“Wednesday,” says Herman. “Why?”

“No, I mean the date.”

He looks at his watch. “It’s the twelfth,” he says.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “That means we still have time.”

“Time for what?” I say.

She looks at me. “My father made me promise not to tell anyone. But none of us knew what was happening then. I cannot think of anyone who would want to kill me other than Alim. And if he tried to kill me, then he probably also tried to kill Katia and killed her friend. What was his name?”

“Emerson Pike.”

“I believe if my father knew all of this, he would want me to tell you. It may be the last chance we have to talk to him. The note says he is going to try and call me.”

“When?” says Herman.

She hands him the note. “He says he is going to be in Panama. But he doesn’t say why.” Suddenly a dark expression blankets her face.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“He won’t be able to reach me.”

“Why not?”

“The only number he has for me is my cell phone. It was at the house.”