Andreo's Race (16 page)

Back in town, we use some of our emergency money to buy food and water before hopping on our bikes and heading out. I'm in some kind of mental fog, following Raul because he seems to be decisive about where we're going. I tell myself that if Vanessa was ever in that cabin, it was only briefly, and Raul and I may have been completely wrong about seeing Hugo Vargas.

Anyway, what right did we have to spy on my birth mother or try to see her again? I can e-mail her through Detective Colque; maybe she'll eventually soften and tell us who Raul's parents are, if she even knows. Maybe it is time to head back to Cochabamba and face my parents.

My thoughts are interrupted when Raul pulls off the main road.

“I want to go to the Matrimonial Cave,” he states.

“You and Maria getting married?”

“Ha-ha.”

“It'll take too long, Raul. We need to get to Cochabamba.”

“It's only a few minutes away, Andreo. You really have to see it. Trust me. Please?”

I frown, then shrug. “Okay, if it's that special. But only for a few minutes.”

“I promise.”

At the Matrimonial Cave, a boy half-dozing in the shade of a bush looks surprised to see us pull up on bikes. Judging from the size of the parking lot, he is more used to tour buses disgorging fifty customers at a time. I don't like the way his eyes latch on to our sturdy mountain bikes. He rises slowly, yawns and shakes a can of coins at us. We pay the fee he asks and wander into the cave, wheeling our bikes with us. Instantly, the coolness and grandeur of the cathedral-like space mesmerize me. We're the only visitors, and I wander around the echoey expanse in a happy trance, staring up at the vaulted ceilings. Among the spectacular rock formations are some that look like choir stalls, maybe even angels. A high-up section of stalactites definitely resembles a pipe organ.

Raul, who has seen it all before, heads directly to a moist wall in the back of the cave, where a stack of folding chairs looks ready for duty should a bride, groom and congregation arrive.

“Where are you going?” the guard boy asks as Raul stops in front of a locked cupboard beside the chairs.

“I want to see the registry of everyone married in this cave,” Raul says in Spanish. “Is it in this cupboard?”

“Raul, what are you up to?” I demand.

“It's not for the public,” the boy barks.

Raul pulls out a wad of our emergency money. The boy's eyes grow large as Raul extends a stack of bills and asks, “Enough?”

“Raul—”

“I'll explain in a minute,” he says casually.

The boy grabs the money from Raul's outstretched palm. He fishes a key from a cord around his neck, opens the cupboard and produces a large book filled with yellowed, mildewed, smudged pages.

Raul turns the pages rapidly, his finger running down columns of dates. “You have other, older books?” he asks eventually.

The boy's eyes narrow, but he drags out a stack from the bottom of the cupboard. Raul digs through until he finds the one he wants, then flips through it methodically. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he hands it to me, his finger pressed to a particular line.

“Vanessa Gutierrez and Hugo Vargas,” I read in disbelief. The date recorded is roughly a year after I was born. The witness is Dr. Zacharie Akumuntu.

A roaring fills my ears. I slam the book shut, which sends dust flying up my nostrils, and shove it back in the arms of the boy.

“You pulled me up here because you suspected this?” I accuse my friend.

“Sorry, Andreo,” he replies softly. “I was afraid you wouldn't come if I told you what I was up to.”

“Damn right I wouldn't have!” Shaking with rage and confusion, I flee from the cave, from Raul, from everything to do with the Matrimonial Cave, dragging my bike with me. I swing my leg over the crossbar, grip my handlebars and take off, almost mowing down a newly arrived flood of tourists coming off a bus in the parking lot.

Raul is shouting, but I can outride him. I can outride my thoughts, my family—birth and adoptive—and myself.

I don't know how far I ride before a rock punctures my tire. After dismounting, I kick my bike, cursing, then sink to the dusty, empty road and feel hot salty tears spill down my cheeks. I curl into a ball and let myself sob as if I were a little kid. There's no one anywhere near to see or hear me. Only dry, desolate, rocky terrain.

All sense of time disappears under the graying early-afternoon sky. When I'm finally spent, my face a mess of sodden dust, I dig in my pack for some food. Beef jerky goes down with a swill of bottled water. Staring at a swarming anthill near my feet, wondering where I am, I tug out the map, smooth it on the ground and look at it blankly. Some navigator. I'm lost. Inside and out.

“We're due west of the Matrimonial Cave,” says a voice behind me. “And just northwest of town.”

I take a deep breath and refuse to turn around. He drops down beside me.

“Sorry,
mon
.”

My teeth grit together.
How dare he follow me!

“Doesn't mean they're still married. Doesn't mean anything,” I say defiantly.

He shakes his head. “Time to get real, Andreo.”

“They could've divorced years ago. She wouldn't stay with a jerk like that. Maybe they hadn't seen each other in ages and he brought her up to that shack to question her after she met with me, just like Colque said. Maybe it's all my fault for meeting with her.”

“You're still clinging to the fairy-tale birth-mother thing.”

I pick up a nearby stone and aim it at him. He doesn't flinch.

“You just had to haul me there, didn't you? You couldn't stand for me to be happy when you never got to meet yours.”

“Oh, so now it's all my fault.”

“For all I know, you scribbled that marriage entry into the stupid book when you and Maria were running around the cave yesterday.”

“Come off it,
mon
. You're cracking up.” Raul rises, his face drained of sympathy. “It's time for us to head back to Cochabamba, Andreo. You know the truth now, and your parents will be worrying soon.”

“My parents.” I spit into the dirt. “They're not my parents. David's not my brother. They're a lousy family.”

“You don't know anything about lousy families.” His tone holds a warning, but I don't care.

“We could stay here together, Raul. You said yourself that your family sucks and there's no point going home.”

“Yeah, and I didn't mean it, just like you don't mean what you're saying now. Got some water, by the way? My hydration pack punctured when I fell off my bike following you here.”

I let him drink from mine. “You could stay here with Maria. We could stay here together. This is Bolivia, our real home.”

“Andreo, pull yourself together and let's get biking. We have to get to Cochabamba before your parents panic and call the police on us.”

“
You
go!” I shout. “Get out of my face! It's none of your business what I do!”

Raul hesitates, then shakes his head, mounts his bike and rides away, heading north. His dust trail swirls and rises to meet blackening clouds. I look down and kick the anthill till its residents swarm in confusion, their home a mess.

I wipe my sleeve across my face and force myself to replay my meeting with Vanessa. I try to cling to the memory of the rose perfume, silken hair and long embrace. I hear her soft voice:
I've waited for this a very long time
and
Call me Mom
.

Then I flash back to something Maria's grandmother said:
She was a quiet girl
,
always did what she was told
.

Had Vargas told her what to say to me?
I remember the way Vanessa urged me to tell her about myself.
What did
I learn about her?
Almost nothing. She works as a secretary for an international firm.…

“No way,” I say aloud, crushing a light brown, medium-size ant that has crawled up my shin and bitten me. The international firm she works for is Vargas's black-market business. So Raul had figured out that that was a possibility but was right that I'd never have accepted it without seeing the documents in the Matrimonial Cave.

Yes, I'm married. Very happily. Not to your father
. Her glowing face as she said that looms in my mind; the memory stings like my ant bite. Married happily to a scumbag. A criminal on the run. To the person who took her in when she had no one and helped sell her baby. Me.

After Vanessa had you
, Ardillita had said,
she stayed on to help the housemother. Nowhere else to go but the streets, I suppose. She was good to me
.

I picture my first glimpse of Vanessa in the clinic: her high heels, diamond earrings and elegant sweater. Her nervous smile and the way she became distant when I asked about Raul's parents. Of course she knows who Raul's birth parents are! She helped arrange the adoption, profited from it. And from the other 598 babies.

I crush another ant. I stand and stomp on as many as I can, destroying the last bits of their hill in the process.

Why did she agree to meet with me at all?
The answer comes all too quickly: Ardillita spotted her in town and tipped me off. I told Detective Colque, and he called Dr. A to try and locate her for me.

I step away from the anthill. Dr. A has probably been referring girls in trouble to Vargas all along, including Vanessa when she was seventeen. Of course, Vargas could pay lots of different village doctors for referrals. And hadn't my outburst to his receptionist brought Dr. A away from his lunch break pretty damn fast? He knew who I was instantly.

So Dr. A notified Vargas, whom he knew to be hiding out in Torotoro, in the shack on the hill. Vargas didn't want Colque to make the connection between himself and Vanessa, and didn't want Raul and me to figure out where Vanessa was staying. So Vargas persuaded Vanessa—his
wife
Vanessa, I think bitterly—to meet me at the clinic and give me what I wanted, hoping I'd be satisfied and carry on with the adventure race and get out of the country, out of his hair. And hoping that would get Colque out of Torotoro and back to Cochabamba too, to cool his chances of finding out where Vargas really was.

I ease my aching head into my hands. All my life I've dreamed about my birth mother. I created a fantasy birth mother; Raul is right about that. But can I dismantle her in a day?

Her words to me may or may not have been genuine, but in the sixteen years since she had me, she has helped Vargas sell babies for profit. She married him by choice; she opted to become his criminal accomplice. Between them, they've messed up the lives of 600 innocent babies and taken advantage of tons of teenage girls
and trusting couples. I owe her nothing; all I can do to counteract the ugliness of the truth I've just uncovered is to help shut down this ring now. Yes—I stand up and step away from the homeless ants already desperately running in circles to build anew—that is my new mission before I leave Bolivia.

A cold drop of rain plops on my head. I look up. The storm clouds are ready to spill. Soon I'm getting splattered big-time. Time to move, but where am I going? To town to notify Detective Colque, I decide. Can I turn in my own birth mother along with Vargas? If she is innocent, I reason, the police will sort it out. If she's not, I will have done the right thing.

I fix the flat tire and pedal hard in the pounding rain. It takes an hour to reach the Internet café, where I pay to use the phone. My hand is so wet I can barely grip the receiver, but Colque doesn't answer anyway. When a recording suggests leaving a message, I blurt out something about the Matrimonial Cave revealing the Vargas/Vanessa connection and urge him to relay that to the police. Then I say Raul and I are finally heading back to Cochabamba.

I come out of the Internet café shaking all over. If Colque's not available, I should notify the local police myself. Colque said he'd tell them to keep an eye on the shack, but since he wasn't convinced it was Vargas, maybe he never bothered.

I push my bike up wet, cobbled streets toward the
police station, which turns out to be a small, drab, stucco building with chipped roof tiles. I'm still well down the street from it when I see two men come out of the door and pause to chat. I step back into the shadows of a building. The tall, strongly built man looks familiar. Slowly, I recognize him as the guy who introduced us to Maria at the start of the race: Ricardo Ferreira, Cochabamba police chief.
What's he doing in Torotoro?
My taut chest relaxes: He's Colque's boss, obviously, following up on a call from the detective and finally closing in on Vargas. The other guy, dressed in a similar uniform, must be the local sheriff. Just as I decide to move forward and introduce myself, they spin around to paste a poster up on the police notice board. I squint to see what it's about.
Yes!
I smile.

“
WANTED: HUGO VARGAS
.”

I'd recognize his picture anywhere by now: the thin mustache, beady eyes and black fedora. Then I see the men paste another poster up. I draw back into the shadows in horror.
What?
This one features Raul and me!