Body of Truth (27 page)

“
Despacio
,” Lita said, and Haydon slowed the car as they reached the top of a small rise. Following her single-word directions, Haydon turned left toward the central city and eased down a sloping side street. There were more trees, the lower few feet of their trunks painted white, a ghostly queue swallowed by the long throat of the narrow lane disappearing into a smoky darkness beyond their headlights. They drove past a car parked on the right side with two men in it, but Lita paid no attention though Haydon knew she had seen them, and then in a moment she raised her hand and pointed to their right, to a black door set in the high, uninterrupted wall behind the file of trees. Haydon pulled to the side and parked on the slope, turning his wheels to the curb and cutting the engine. He heard Lita signal a double-click on the radio in her
rebozo
, and then they got out of the car.

She waited for him under the cypresses as he came around the car to the sidewalk, and together they approached the narrow door, which Haydon now saw was actually a wrought-iron gate with a solid metal panel cut to its exact size and welded to its bars for privacy. A small window grate was set in the center of the solid gate. Haydon noticed that fifteen meters to their left, and farther down the sloping sidewalk, heavy wooden doors allowed cars to enter behind the wall from the street. The light was too poor for him to see whether or not a garage lay on the other side. Just beyond these doors another car was parked at the curb, and Haydon made out two more dark silhouettes. Behind them, on the other side of the street were more trees, another endless wall, more gates and doorways. He sensed that the courtyards behind these walls were large and that there were gardens in which the cicadas, of which he now became aware, were hiding and humming in the dark heat. A lamp was mounted in the wall beside the narrow gate, and Lita pushed the small amber button underneath it.

In the moment they had to wait, Haydon tried to see into the courtyard through the small grate, but it was too dark. He looked at Lita’s profile against the little splash of dull light on the stucco wall. She was all business, quiet, stern, with the slightest hint of a frown between her dark eyes as she bent her head, waiting. She was remote—perhaps her dress contributed to her sense of inscrutability—and absent was any hint of the reserved tenderness she had shown the night before outside Macabeo’s grisly mortuary. Haydon remembered her past. Perhaps that brief moment with her amid the groans of Macabeo’s resentful curs had been an anomaly. It was, after all, only a “sense” of her that he had had. He didn’t even know what it was, just a spark of communication, of unguarded sincerity that seemed like a flicker of revelative innocence in the context of the shadow world in which she lived.

An electric latch clicked, and the gate sprung ajar. Lita pushed it open without looking around at Haydon, and they entered a courtyard of cobblestones. There were buildings on three sides of the courtyard, a couple of large jacarandas growing almost in the center of it, which must have provided a delicate shade in the daytime. Plantains grew in the corners and along part of the front wall, which was now behind them. This was a more humble courtyard than Haydon had seen at Janet’s or Bennett Pittner’s. But it seemed to be much used, with several tables under the jacaranda and a few odd chairs scattered around. The three surrounding buildings were of differing stories, but of relatively the same height because of the sloping grade of the hillside. It was a compound of residences, with windows thrown open, a dim light behind curtains here, a glow of a television there, the smells of cooking food, and a whiff of cigarette smoke. There was an occasional voice, but none above a murmur.

Lita walked across the courtyard, veering to her right toward a lighted open doorway through which Haydon could see several men sitting in a large kitchen. One of the men was Cage. As they approached. Cage looked toward their footsteps, and Lita stepped through the doorway with Haydon following.

“Damn,” Cage said to Haydon as they came in. “I thought for a little bit there that you were dead. Sit down.”

Two Guatemalan men were at the large wooden table with Cage, and an Indian woman was behind them, cleaning up the dishes from the meal that the men had apparently just finished. There was a modern gas stove, but the Indian woman obviously had cooked the meal at the wide-mouthed fireplace where several pots still sat simmering at the edge of the coals. There was a wide, seat-high hearth that went the full length of the room and where Lita sat down away from the heat of the fire, completely ignored by Cage. Haydon saw that as she unwrapped the radio and laid it on the
rebozo
on the hearth, she also unwrapped a large automatic handgun.

“You want something to eat?” Cage asked. Haydon shook his head. The Indian woman was already filling a plate of food for Lita, although they had not exchanged a word. Haydon sat down at the table at a right angle from Cage and across from the two Guatemalan men, who studied their beer bottles, avoiding Haydon’s eyes. They were drinking Gal-los, and Cage did not introduce them.

Nor did Cage explain why he had been following Haydon.

“When Lita heard the gunshots, she radioed that she thought you’d been shot,” Cage said. “The last shot, the third one, she said was the coup de grace. She heard the car leave…or van, was it a van…?” Haydon nodded. “…and she started in your direction. Then you came out from behind the damn building.” Cage looked at him. “Want a Gallo?”

“Yeah,” Haydon said, sure he wanted a Gallo.

Cage asked the Indian woman to bring a beer to Haydon. “What was going on?” Cage asked.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you were following me.”

“Depends on how much you understand your situation here,” Cage said, sipping from his own amber bottle. “If you don’t understand, then you might have been surprised.” He had pushed his chair away from the table and had stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He wasn’t all that goggle-eyed about the violence that had just taken place. His attitude was more that of one wanting to know how Haydon had found the company at the cocktail party he had just attended.

The Indian woman set Haydon’s beer on the table in front of him, and he quickly took a long deep drink of it.

“Well, I am surprised,” Haydon said. “You want to explain some of this to me?”

“Like what?”

“For a man who didn’t want to get involved in my business here, putting a beeper on my car is a curious thing to do.”

“I thought you might stumble onto something.”

“If I did, do you think you’d know it?”

“It’s the way I make my living, knowing shit like what you’re doing. Knowing and getting involved are different sides of the coin.”

“If I’d been shot back there in that alley, what would you have learned?”

“That you didn’t know Borrayo as well as you thought you did. That Lena had been in some really deep shit.”

Haydon didn’t say anything. It was useless to try to unravel the ways in which Cage might have learned that Haydon knew Borrayo, or even that Cage knew it was Borrayo whom Haydon had gone to meet in Santa Isabel. Haydon wasn’t going to kid himself. He couldn’t operate here alone, and if there was even a remote chance of finding Fossler, he was going to have to cast his lot with either Pittner or Cage. Those were his two options, though Pittner really wasn’t an option at all. He was sitting in front of the only man who could help him. But he had a hunch about Cage.

“I’ll tell you something,” Haydon said, and he took another long drink of the cold Gallo. “I think you’re full of shit. Lita was in radio contact with you tonight, and you were telling her how to handle it. If you were only interested in information you would have been better off letting me go after the shooting. I would have driven off to stir up more trouble with the beeper firmly in place and still unknown to me. I wouldn’t have known you were following me, either. But she didn’t stay hidden. She stepped out, gave everything away, and then brought me here. And now I’m sitting here and you’re waiting, these two guys are waiting, the four guys outside on the street are waiting. I’ve duly noted all this. You’re showing me you’ve got all this capability, all these people. Why don’t you just spit it out? I’m not the only one who wants something here, am I?”

When Haydon finished, he was looking squarely at Cage, but out of the corner of his eye he could see the two Guatemalans looking at him. Cage had the beginnings of a smirk on his face, and Haydon could tell that he was still formulating a response. As he looked Cage in the eye, he thought he saw the smirk change to an expression of satisfaction, as though Haydon had reacted as Cage thought he would or, perhaps, hoped he would. And then even that expression faded, and Cage grew sober. He abandoned his slouch and sat up in his chair, he put his forearms on the table and rotated his Gallo between his open hands, thinking. The Indian woman at the fireplace put a small root knot on the coals, and the smoldering chunk of wood filled the room with an aromatic waft that was pleasant even in the hot, still night. Now the two Guatemalans had locked their eyes firmly on Cage.

Cage looked at Haydon. “Lena’s not dead,” he said.

CHAPTER 28

T
here was nothing to say. Haydon simply sat there waiting for Cage to continue. He was aware of Lita watching him. The only sounds in the room were the root knot crackling in the fire and the soft kitchen sounds of the Indian woman as she moved about her business, careful to be quiet, invisible and silent. The two Guatemalan men were stone. There was a fleeting moment when Haydon wasn’t sure what Cage was going to do, then Cage went on to play his part. It was what most men did in life, always. Behind Haydon, through the open window and the open door, the cicadas continued to complain of the heat of the dry season.

“
Otro cerveza
,” Cage said, and drained the last of his bottle and set it aside. He turned a little aside in his chair once again, and crossed his legs, and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his guayabera pocket. He took one, offered one to Haydon, but Haydon shook his head. Cage lighted his cigarette with his red plastic lighter and without looking at the two Guatemalans slid both the pack and the lighter down the table to them. It was the first time he had acknowledged their presence since Haydon had gotten there.

“I told you that I’d gotten a call from Pitt to go pick up a body at the morgue, that I’d know which one. I told you that I’d already seen the body before I came and got you.” The Indian woman brought the beer, and Cage reached for it without thanking her or looking at what he was doing. “I thought it was her at first too, I really did. Guy threw the sheet back and…shit, I thought it was her. The girl was about the same size, close enough, and her face was beat to shit. I’ve noticed when they mess up the mouth it’s harder to tell, on first look like that, especially if there’s still swelling. But Lena had bigger tits, and that’s what I noticed.” He guzzled the beer, and sucked on the cigarette. “I looked at the hands. Lena had a small, whitish crescent scar behind the third knuckle of her right hand. It was just a little thing, and it’s surprising I even remembered it. But the hands were bloody, muddy. I took the right one over to the sink there in the morgue and washed it. The scar wasn’t there. Then I wondered if I’d remembered it wrong, and I took the left hand over to the sink and washed it. No scar.”

Someone appeared at the open door, a woman, and said something in an Indian dialect. The two men at the table looked over at Lita, who got up from the hearth, picked up her
rebozo
and the radio, and walked out of the kitchen with the other woman, leaving the automatic behind.

“Smaller tits, no scar, wrong woman,” Cage said. “I looked at her face, studied it. It was just too screwed up, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t Lena. I photographed her, lots of photographs, because I had a hunch this girl could disappear on us.”

“Pittner thought it was Lena?”

“I think he suspected it was Lena. It was probably an informant tip: ‘Anglo in the morgue.’”

“But he didn’t know.”

Cage shook his head.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I couldn’t tell. We’d have to wait for fingerprints, dental record confirmations. That’s the sort of thing Macabeo does for them.”

“Why’d you lie to him?”

Cage looked at him. “Jesus, Haydon.” He shook his head and pulled on his cigarette. He took a drink of cold Gallo. He stared out the door into the courtyard. “I remember, after it got too crazy for me juggling screwing Janet and working for Pitt. I just cut it off. Janet went goofy about it. Almost blew the whole thing, showing up at my place at all kinds of hours. I don’t know why he didn’t find out. Finally I told her I’d kill her if she didn’t stop. Make it look like an accident or something. That cleared her head. But then a month later they separated. And then a month after that, she told him she wanted a divorce.

“This last news had an interesting effect on Pitt. I was at my place one night, and Pitt called from somewhere and told me to stay put, he was coming over to see me. I could tell he’d been drinking. I thought. Oh shit he’s found out about me and Janet. I figured she had gone all weasely and told him—she could be lunatic sometimes—and she had gotten hateful and wanted to twist the knife and told him. I expected Pitt was wanting to have this
mano a mano
confrontation sort of thing with me. When he showed up, he was in terrible shape. I don’t even know how the hell he managed to make it. He had this bottle of his beloved bourbon with him, and he was in tears. Janet had told him that afternoon that she wanted a divorce.

“He’d started drinking at the embassy, a very risky thing to do, and one which showed how bad he’d been knocked back by the news. It was during the rainy season then, and we sat under the loggia at my place and smoked his American cigarettes and drank his honest-to-God bourbon, sat there in the dark and watched the rain dribble off the eaves like ink. It was a screwy scene. The bad news and the whiskey had plunged Pitt into this self-absorbed grief, and he proceeded to bare his soul to me. Shit. I hate that sort of thing. He told me all these intimate things—about him and Janet—like a goddamned college kid. He told me a hell of a lot more than I wanted to hear, but it was kind of funny too, him deciding to spill all that tortured erotica to me. Hell, I’d discovered more about Janet’s buttons and juices in four months of adultery with her than Pitt had managed to uncover in eight years of marriage. But I got drunk with him and had a good time doing it. Did I have any qualms about deceiving him?” Cage pulled down the corners of his mouth and shook his head. “I’d been lying to Pitt long before I started banging his wife. Pitt’s the kind of man you have to lie to if you want to maintain any kind of integrity, any kind of self-respect.”