Esperanza (16 page)

People who passed eyed him curiously, stared, or looked away. He felt exposed and vulnerable out here on this narrow, shadowed, labyrinthine street, and quickly ducked through the nearest door, into the Incan Café.

Throughout the bus ride to Gigante, Tess’s emotions fluctuated wildly between highs and lows, euphoria and despair. When she thought of returning to the Bureau, the prodigal daughter welcomed back to the tribe and her old routine with Dan, she felt nauseated. When she thought of staying with Ian, her heart sang. So it went, mile after mile. The deeper she moved into this country, the deeper she traveled into those parts of herself too long neglected, shoved aside, or buried altogether.

The bus stopped every few blocks until they were out of town, then continued nonstop for miles. Buildings gave way to open countryside. Deep green hills rolled away on either side of the road, thickets of monkey-puzzle trees and pines sheltered horses, llamas, birds. Acre after acre of windmills stood tall against the clear blue sky, dozens of greenhouses dotted the landscape, the air filled with hummingbirds.

Tess and Nomad got off at the sign for Gigante, population 4,567. The
air felt warmer, the sun burned white against a blue continent of sky. A gorgeous day for walking. No giant fans out here. This entire area looked rural, with pastures and fields, humble homes, a smattering of stores that resembled Bodega del Cielo. She passed silos, concrete buildings, warehouses, more windmills. Quechuan peasants herded goats and sheep. Several kids on donkeys called out greetings to Nomad. The dog had his own fan club.

Gigante—giant—hardly qualified as a punctuation point and probably was named after the snow-covered volcano that overshadowed it. The main street boasted a theater showing an old Fellini movie, a drugstore, several restaurants, cafés, a market. Bicycles outnumbered cars. The beautiful weather had lured people outdoors.

Up and down side streets, she caught sight of neighborhoods of wooden homes with tin roofs, small concrete houses with jalousie windows. Laundry hung from clotheslines, dresses and shirts swaying in a slight breeze. Most homes had small gardens—tomato vines, herbs, great leafy sprouts that might be broccoli or cauliflower. How did any of this grow at an altitude of more than thirteen thousand feet? Her imperfect memory of her trip across the continental divide was of barrenness. No trees, not even aspens.

Tess didn’t see any street signs, so she ducked into a café to ask directions to Calle Libertad, Manuel’s street. When Nomad slipped inside with her, no one objected.

On a rack to the right of the door were prepaid cell phones and other cell and iPod supplies. Tess selected a cell with two hundred minutes on it, went over to the counter. The young man who waited on her didn’t even seem to notice the dog. His nametag read Hank, and he looked to be fresh out of college. When he spoke, she pegged his accent as either Midwestern or Canadian. How had some kid from either place ended up in this rural Ecuadorian town?

“What can I get you?” he asked, all smiles.

“A café con leche.” More caffeine. What the hell. “And the cell.”

“Sure thing.” He looked at Nomad, then leaned forward, elbows resting against the counter. “If you’re with Nomad, the coffee is on the house. The cell is thirty bucks. I’ll activate it for you.”

When he returned with her coffee and cell phone, she said, “What is it with this dog? Everyone knows him.”

“Nomad means you’re from the Posada de Esperanza. If you’re in cottage thirteen, then you’ve been marked by the
brujos.”
He smiled nervously,
lowered his voice. “But you never heard any of that from me.” He tossed Nomad a doggie treat. “Lemme me get you some water, guy.” Hank filled a bowl with water, stepped out from behind the counter, set it on the floor.

As Nomad lapped it up, Tess said, “We’re on our way to see Manuel Ortega, who—”

“Calle Libertad, one block north. Hang a left. Third house in on the right. You’ll know it’s the right house because there are always dozens of cars in the driveway. Your name’s Tess Livingston, right?”

“How—”

“You should know that I’m supposed to contact the inn, let them know you’re here.” He looked about warily, like some paranoid stoner who believed that everyone over thirty might be a drug cop. “Several days ago, they sent out an e-mail about you and Ian Ritter. How you might be visiting Manuel and were probably traveling with Nomad. Now how do
they
know this kinda Big Brother shit? That’s what troubles me.”

“Who sent this e-mail?”

“Ed Granger. He and Sara Wells—you met her?”

Not yet. “No.”

“Well, they’re pretty high up in the governing hierarchy of the town and when they send out a notice like this, people pay attention. Personally, I think it has to do with the
brujos’
interest in you and your friend.” Hank stepped out from behind the counter, spoke quietly. “Look, a lot goes on here that I don’t understand.”

“Thanks, Hank.” She sipped from the mug. “I appreciate the information. Where’re you from?”

“Wisconsin. Came down after college to see South America, met a woman who lives here, we moved in together. So here I am. The cost of living is next to nothing, the expat community is growing, hiking is fantastic, locals are friendly. We’re saving money to start a bookstore and Internet café. What’s there not to like?”

“The
brujos.”

“Well. Yeah. There’s that.” He smiled quickly. “But we work around them. Look, if you’re going to hire Manuel to drive you to Quito, it’ll take eight hours
if
he’s got a lead foot.”

Eight hours. She paid, and as soon as she and Nomad were outside again, she punched out her mother’s cell number, Maddie’s, then the house phone. Busy signals. Tess typed a text message to her mother and Maddie:
I met someone. Journalism prof at U of Minn. Game changer. More later, luv.
She pressed send and smiled when the envelope icon sailed off into cyberspace.

Nomad suddenly barked and dashed toward a house with six cars in the driveway and several bikes on the sidewalk. The windows were open, music drifted out into the cool air—John Lennon crooning to give peace a chance. She caught up with the dog and before she could knock, the door was flung open.

Manuel stood there in jeans, a dove-gray pullover sweater, black running shoes. His dark hair was combed away from his face, revealing an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear. His face collapsed with astonishment.
“Dios mio.”
He stepped out onto the porch, shut the door, scratched Nomad behind the ears, and glared at Tess. “You should not be here. It is much less safe than the city.”

“That’s why Nomad is with me. I need answers, Manuel. And I’d like to hire you to drive Ian and me to the nearest airport.”

He touched her elbow, urging her down the driveway, the dog trotting along behind them. “We’ll go someplace safe to talk. Where we won’t be interrupted.”

Or seen,
she thought.

They walked in silence for half a mile. She sensed his unease, but couldn’t tell if it was due to her unexpected arrival or that he was afraid to be outside, here and now, with her. The road turned to gravel and dirt, houses thinned out, thickets of scrawny pines appeared. Except for a scudding of clouds to the west, the sky was a pure, unadulterated blue.

“Señorita Tess,” Manuel began.

“Please call me Tess. The ‘señorita’ stuff makes me feel old.”

For the first time since they’d left his house, he smiled. “You are many things, but
old
is not one of them.” Manuel gestured toward a large greenhouse. On either side of it was a fenced pasture where horses grazed. “We can speak freely in there.”

“Why can’t we speak freely right
here
? No one’s watching. No one can hear us.”

Manuel shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looked around nervously. “It is too easy to be surprised by
brujos
out here.”

“Let’s start with these
brujos.
What are they, Manuel?”

His frown forced his dark, bushy brows closer together, so they looked like feathery wings that might lift off his face. He slipped a Zippo lighter from his sweatshirt pocket, plucked the cigarette from behind his ear, lit it
with a flourish. As he snapped the lid shut, Tess remembered that her dad had owned an identical silver Zippo lighter that he kept with him even after he’d quit smoking. Whenever he was preparing for a case, he used to snap the Zippo’s lid open and shut, just as Manuel had, but repeatedly, so that it clicked like castanets. She and her mother used to joke that without the lighter, Charlie would be a mess of nervous tics.

Manuel inhaled deeply, with obvious satisfaction. “I told you already.” He dropped his head back, blew smoke rings into the air, snapped the lighter open and shut. “They are lost souls.”

“That’s an expression. To me it means someone is screwed up.” She stabbed at her temple. “
Loco.
Crazy. Nuts. Is that what you mean?”

“They are . . . spirits.
Fantasmas.”

“Ghosts?”
She balked. “You people are terrified of
ghosts?”

Manuel blew more smoke rings, kept snapping the lighter’s lid. Nomad sat between them, vigilant, tense. “Let me try again.” He switched to Spanish and proceeded to describe a worldview that was so far removed from her beliefs and experience that it sounded like fantasy. Hungry ghosts stuck in the dimension closest to physical life. Ghosts that could possess humans. Ghosts that assumed human form anywhere north of the Río Palo by drawing on the residual power of the area from when it was a nonphysical location. Whatever
that
meant.

It all sounded nuts.
He
sounded nuts. When you were dead you were dead, that was it, end of story. Except that she didn’t really believe that. In Quito, she had felt her dead father around, lights had come on by themselves, she’d even caught a whiff of the aftershave he often had used. But before she could say anything, Manuel’s eyes fixed on something over her right shoulder and Nomad emitted a low, throaty growl, the fur along his spine rising. Manuel dropped his cigarette, crushed it with his shoe, then touched her elbow, urging her forward, toward the greenhouse.

“We must go inside, Tess. Quickly.”

The urgency in his voice alarmed her. Nomad darted out in front of them, leading the way. Off to her left, through the trees, fog rolled toward them. They broke into a run.

Manuel pushed the door open and they darted into the warm, humid building. Tall mango and papaya trees brushed the skylights, branches sagged with ripe fruit—oranges, grapefruits, avocados. Colorful patches of lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, and cauliflower covered the ground. It smelled like high summer in Florida, when the rains came and heat and humidity
hung so thickly in the air that you could almost taste the soil, salt, ripening fruit, fertile earth. Manuel quickly shut the heavy metal door, bolted it, pressed a green button on the keypad to the right of the door. Somewhere in town, a siren started shrieking. Another button activated the accordion shutters outside and they rumbled and clattered, closing off the greenhouse walls, the skylights.

As light inside the greenhouse diminished, emergency beacons winked on. Nomad barked and tore up a row lined with banana trees. He finally stopped and started digging frantically. Manuel dropped to his knees beside the dog, dug his fingers down into mulch and soil, pulled open a trapdoor. A hinged, wooden ramp unfolded, Nomad raced down it. Tess and Manuel hurried after him, footfalls echoing as they descended fifteen feet through twilight.

Above them, the assault began, a relentless pounding and battering muted by the mounds of earth that covered them. At the bottom of the ramp, Manuel punched a button on yet another keypad, the trapdoor shut, emergency lights flared. A flight of wooden stairs took them down even deeper and the assault now sounded distant, unreal.

She followed Manuel into a long corridor so narrow that she couldn’t extend her arms without knocking something off the dozens of wall shelves that held bags of rice, canned goods, thirty-gallon containers of water, tools, even propane tanks. The corridor emptied into a dimly lit but comfortable room where Nomad already lapped water from a bowl on the floor. Manuel hit a switch for the lights and the room lit up with floor lamps, coffee table lamps, recessed lighting. He locked the door, Tess looked around slowly.

What the fuck.
“A panic room.” But far more comfortable. Couches, beds, a table, sink, faucets, TV. “My God, Manuel, who built this?”

“A rich colonel from Gigante provided the money for our few shelters like this one. We’re about forty feet underground. The fog cannot penetrate here. We have learned to defend ourselves.”

“
Defend
yourselves? Jesus, you’re like kids terrified of the bogeyman. You’re not defending yourselves. You have
defenses.
There’s a difference.”

Something dark and terrible entered his eyes. He spoke in a hoarse, choked voice. “Ten years ago, when the attacks started, my sister and I were riding horses in a field behind our house. A fog rose. It moved over us so swiftly that my sister didn’t escape. I felt it the moment she was seized. I heard her calling to me as she emerged from the fog. I saw her outstretched
arms. And I ran. When the
brujo
used up her body, she started bleeding from her eyes and nose, her skin, from beneath her toenails, her fingernails. I
saw
it all, Tess. And so yes, I hide well and deeply.”