Exposure (11 page)

“You seen the kid today?”

Rubén stuck his bottom lip out and shook his head. “Nope. The weather, I guess.”

“Hmm. I doubt it. It’s never stopped him before.”

Rubén shrugged. “Yeah, well. These kids come and go, you know.”

The spectral traffic hissed behind its veils of rain.

“I guess they do,” Faustino said, and went inside.

From the window of the bar’s kitchen, Nina saw Bush return to the shed. He splodged across the yard, holding something in a plastic bag over his head as if he hoped, absurdly, that it could keep him dry. She warmed milk in a pan, whisked into it a big spoonful of powdered chocolate and a pinch of chili, and poured the mix into a jug. She cut the last of the banana cornbread into three chunks and balanced them on top of the jug, then, with Fidel’s raincoat draped over her head and shoulders, carried the breakfast over to the shed.

“People? C’mon, open up! You need gills to live out here!”

It was Felicia who dragged the door open and welcomed Nina in. Apart from the breakfast, the smile was the only good thing in the room. Bush, wearing just his shorts, stood scowling. Rivulets of rainwater ran from his hair down his narrow body. Over on the girls’ pallet, Bianca had her hands on her hips, portraying rage like a bad actress in a soap opera. Even in the pallid light from the papered-over window, Nina could see the glint of her wet and angry eyes.

She turned to Nina. “Bush says I gotta wear this crap from now on. He’s gone down the market an’ spent money on it. I mean,
why
? What’ve I
done
?”

The oversize sweatshirt was made of some cheap synthetic material. It had once been red, perhaps, but had sickened into a nasty pink. On its front there was the faded image of a gringo rock star who had gone out of fashion several years ago. The knee-length shorts looked like the underpants of a tragic old man. Protruding from these garments, Bianca’s limbs looked thin, not slender, and frail.

She pinched the sides of the sweatshirt and stretched it out. It was at least three times the width of her body; tight across her torso, it gave lewd prominence to her breasts.

“Man,” she said in the voice of a dying heroine, “who’s gonna look at me like this?”

Felicia sighed theatrically. “That’s kinda the
point,
girl.”

Nina saw that it would not work. The ugly clothes served only to draw attention to the child’s beauty, the same way a desolate patch of ground attracts the eye to the single flower that blooms there. About the only thing that would do, she thought, was one of those black sack things with a slit for the eyes, like you saw Arab women wearing on the TV news. Maybe not even that. She set the bread and the jug down on the old suitcase that served as a table.

“Eat,” she said, and smiled up at Bianca. “You got room for some extra belly inside that outfit.”

Bianca collapsed into a cross-legged sulk, her hands cupping her face. On the way out, Nina rested her fingers briefly on Bush’s shoulder. He nodded but did not meet her eyes.

T
HE
D
IEGO
-S
HAKESPEARE
strategy — nothing less than promoting Otello and Desmerelda as modern symbols of married love — works like a dream. They become, as Shakespeare promised they would, iconic. No celebrity magazine dreams of going to press without at least one picture of them, usually on the cover. The gossip columns, even those in the trashiest rags, coo rather than spit. They do not — would not — attempt to prick the gorgeous bubble of love that surrounds the couple. Because the public adores this bubble, its slightly garish prismatic colors, its reassuring fragility. (Paul Faustino, in a comment piece for
La Nación,
uses the word
uxorious
to describe Otello. It’s a word he has always liked but has never found the occasion to use.) The new Elegante ads are erotic, but they manage to convey legitimate and domestic sexiness rather than the dangerous, perverse variety. In response to Shakespeare’s gentle urging, Otello and Desmerelda wear expensive but slightly vulgar clothes when they make public appearances; the common touch is very important. They must be out of reach, but only just. They must dictate fashion, but that fashion — or something like it — must be affordable. (Señor Oguz’s sweatshop doubles its shifts.)

Marriage becomes increasingly fashionable among the poorer classes, which greatly pleases the clergy. (Although they remain a little touchy about the Elegante thing.) The couple poses with the archbishop at the opening of a new Catholic orphanage to which Otello has made a significant financial contribution. Desmerelda grants interviews to teen magazines in which she celebrates the joys of wedlock. (Bianca retrieves these from trash cans and scans them avidly by the light of candle stubs in the shed behind La Prensa, wishing she could read.)

Toward the end of the year, the happy couple purchases a second home, a villa in an exclusive and heavily protected estate on the coast. There is a bidding war between three magazines —
Célebre,
Celebridad,
and
Centella
— to decide who will have exclusive first access to this love nest.
Celebridad
wins. (And it looks like it might bankrupt the magazine, but then the sales and advertising revenues are incredible.) A certain kind of furniture is installed, then removed when the photo shoot is completed. The actual housewarming features a charity auction; Otello and Desmerelda preside over it from high-backed gilded chairs. They each have little auctioneer’s hammers, which they bang on little lecterns to signal a successful bid. It is a black-tie event, so all the male celebrities — even the radical ones — have a strange uniformity. Only Otello is wearing white, a silk tuxedo that sets off the sculptural handsomeness of his face. The bids are reckless, ridiculous. The film star Antonio da Rama pays eighty thousand for a signed pair of Otello’s cleats (white, never worn). Lisboa Ritz, who is famous for being rich and rich for being famous, parts hysterically with two hundred and ten thousand of her hardly earned dollars for the gold-sprayed divan upon which Desmerelda reclined for the cover of her
Cleopatra
album. Cielo, the satellite TV channel, pays two million dollars for the right to film the proceedings. Broadcast on Christmas Eve, the show wins the TV ratings war hands down.

With dwindling patience, Diego waits for the backlash to begin, for the rot to set in. For the public to sicken of this unvaried diet of love and sweetness and fidelity. For the poor to realize how stupid it is to idolize the rich. For a dissenting note to enter the adulatory articles, the naive news coverage, the inane babble of radio DJs. For the appearance of a single photograph showing Otello and Desmerelda looking dejected, disheveled, discordant, even slightly grumpy.

None of this happens. An article in
El Guardián
had sneered at the “grotesque vulgarity” of the housewarming event, and this had cheered Diego briefly, but he knows that
El Guardián
is read only by intellectuals, left-wing politicians, and other persons of no importance or influence. Much as he would like to, he cannot see its snide little article as the first shoots of the spiteful spring he is waiting for. It is as if those human qualities that Diego believes in most deeply — envy, cynicism, resentment — have taken a vacation. It is as if this nation, famed for pulling down statues and spraying graffiti on heroic murals, is stoned on worship. It is deeply frustrating.

Diego had expected, quite reasonably, that Otello’s inflated celebrity would rekindle the hostility of his fellow athletes. But there is no sign of this, either. Perhaps this is because the bastard is playing so well. He is scoring in almost every game, and Rialto is already six points ahead at the top of the table. Blissful marriage has not softened him. In fact, his performance in the last game before the Christmas break is remarkable for its hunger and aggression; he scores twice, reducing the opposing defense to a panicky shambles.

In his weaker moments, Diego contemplates poisoning, unfortunate accidents on staircases, punctured brake pipes on cars.

And he had assumed that continuous exposure would illuminate the cracks, the fissures, in that preposterous marriage. In the couple’s presence he eagerly seeks such signs. He is very good at reading body language. He is abnormally alert to those little glances, those tiny moments of inattention, the hundreds of ways that posture can display or disguise friction. Yet he has detected nothing. Nothing at all.

So Diego broods. He sits in the chair in his bedroom, staring at the distant restless neon of the city. Emilia watches him with her lovely eyes, waiting for him to come to her, to speak. She is neither hurt nor impatient; she understands that his silence is a way of sharing his unhappiness. When he does come to her, he caresses her and says things about her beauty. That is all, but that is enough. Later, in the darkness, she waits for his eyes to close, then closes her own.

Then, early in the new year, three men in two vehicles attempt to kidnap Desmerelda Brabanta. Whether or not she is their specific target is unclear; perhaps they are opportunists willing to ambush any large Mercedes-Benz with mirror windows. The only man who might clarify the situation dies of a gunshot wound before the police can interview him. All that can be said with certainty is that Desmerelda’s bodyguards do not exactly cover themselves with glory.

She is returning from the studios of Miracle, the company making the video for her new single. She is not happy, because for most of the day she has had to hold dance poses in front of blue screens wearing a black body stocking coated with a web of tiny lights that, in theory, technicians will later computerize into a Desmerelda-shaped constellation of stars moving through the universe. It has been very boring. She has had heated discussions with Miracle as to why a body double couldn’t’ve done the work. The caterers were late with the lunch. Ramona, her PA, has been off with a migraine — again — so Desmerelda is now having to work through a backlog of phone messages and texts as long as the Old Testament.

The route into the city takes her car along a sweep of the highway that skirts a mix of housing projects and haphazard slums. Her driver, who has made this trip nine times in the past four days, fails to notice that he has overtaken the same rusty white Toyota sedan three times. Nor does he clock the brown Ford van that has been reappearing in his rearview mirror for some distance. Worse still, because a spot of domestic disharmony made him late for work that morning, he has not filled the Merc’s tank. So when the red warning light comes on, he has to make a decision. Which is less embarrassing: running out of fuel before they get back to the marina or making an unscheduled stop at the scruffy rest stop up ahead? He goes for the second option.

There are two licensed guns in the car, both Colt automatic pistols. One is in a clip mounted under the steering column, the other in the shoulder holster under Enrico’s jacket. Enrico, according to the rules, should be in the back with Desmerelda, but because he is sensitive to bad vibes, he is sitting in the front passenger seat, having figured that this evening La Brabanta would rather be left alone.

When the driver signals to pull off the road, Enrico murmurs, “What you doin’, man?”

“Gotta get gas.”

“Aw, for Chrissake. You’re kidding.”

“Sorry, man.”

Enrico sighs and pulls out his phone.

Indicating the turn is another mistake. The white Toyota, now just ahead, sees and slows down. When the Mercedes pulls into the rest stop, the Toyota — without signaling — whips in behind it and parks, engine running, in a space unlit by the canopy lights. A guy wearing greasy overalls and a red baseball cap gets out of the front passenger seat. The brown van follows the Mercedes in and pulls up at the other side of the pumps. The driver climbs out and yawns with his hand across his face while checking for CCTV cameras. Then he goes to the back of the van and opens the doors, as if he’s fetching a fuel can. Or maybe he’s got a dog in there that has to take a leak.

“What’s happening?” Desmerelda wants to know, not looking up from her phone, which for some stupid reason has frozen up.

“Sorry, señora,” Enrico says. “We had to stop for gas. Can I get you a soft drink or anything?”

“Uh, I dunno. Maybe a juice, if they’ve got organic.”

The driver says, “So, er, you gonna get the gas, or what?”

Enrico has the door open and is trying to reach the office of A1 Security on his phone. “What?”

“Are you gonna get the gas, or am I?”

“Hang on, there’s no signal here. . . . Damn! Er, what? Is this a self-service place?”

“I dunno. No, here’s a guy.”

The man in the overalls comes up to the Mercedes, smiling. He leans down to the car and looks past Enrico to speak to the driver. If he recognizes the passenger in the back, he gives no sign of it.

“Can I help you, señor?”

“Yeah, fill her up.”

Enrico figures that he has to get out from under the canopy to get a signal, so he walks away, scowling at his phone.

The man in the overalls goes to the rear of the car and then comes back. “Excuse me, señor, but your fuel cap is locked. You wanna unlock it for me?”

“Yeah, sure, sorry,” the driver says, and presses the switch. When he turns his head back, there’s the deep black eye of a handgun staring straight at him.

“Okay, my friend,” the now unsmiling face behind the gun says, “unlock the doors. In case you think we’re not serious, look over your right shoulder.”

The driver does so, cautiously, and sees that the man studying the prices on the neighboring pump is holding a big sawed-off shotgun down beside his leg. It is the kind of gun that will blow a major hole in a reinforced window.

Desmerelda finally looks up from her phone and says, “Oh, my God.”

The way the rest stop is built, there’s only one window in the coffee shop that commands a view of the fuel pumps. (They can be overseen from the window in the gas station pay booth, of course, but the underpaid kid in there is stressed out, dealing with the lights going on and off on his register and the people getting their PIN numbers wrong and such, so he never looks out.) And it so happens that the two people sitting at that coffee-shop window are armed police officers. They do not look like police officers. The woman, Sergeant Olympia Res, is wearing torn jeans and a jacket that might have been made from the skins of rats. Her hair is made of the tails not used in the tailoring of the jacket. Her colleague, Officer Alessandro Scuzo, shades parked on top of his head, looks like a pessimistic pimp.

They are here because the unlit overnight parking lot behind this particular rest stop on the Circular has been identified as a place where trucks bringing in raw cocaine from the coast pause to transfer the stuff to smaller vehicles. The police officers are awaiting a container truck that is possibly carrying more than the furniture that appears on its customs declaration. They are edgy because they’ve been sitting there for over an hour, drinking bad coffee and smoking, and they think that maybe they’ve been made by members of the staff who possibly have something to do with the setup.

It’s Scuzo who murmurs, “Hey, check that out. The black Merc. Looks like an ongoing to me.”

“Yep,” Sergeant Res says.
“Damn.”
She jabs her cigarette into the ashtray. “Okay, let’s go. Call the cavalry while we walk to the door.”

Outside, the two officers walk briskly toward the Mercedes. The overalled man has one arm hooked around Desmerelda’s throat and is dragging her toward the rear doors of the brown Ford van. His free arm is behind her back. When he sees Res and Scuzo approaching, he pulls Desmerelda in front of him, but she stumbles and goes down onto her hands and knees. His arm comes up, but before he can level the gun, Olympia Res shoots him square in the chest and he slams against the side of the van and slides onto the concrete without a sound. The man on the far side of the Merc shapes up and lets off something like a cannon, but all it does is blow the top off a pump. Res and Scuzo hit the ground, expecting a major gasoline explosion, but that doesn’t happen. When they look up, the van is accelerating out of the station.