January Justice (16 page)

The Guatemalan Benevolence Society was in a two-story, tan stucco building one block away from MacArthur Park. The storefront glass was obscured on the inside by a massive Guatemalan flag composed of two vertical sky-blue bars separated by a central vertical white bar. In the center of the white bar was a crest or coat of arms, with some rifles, swords, laurel, or olive leaves, and a colorful bird, which I had learned somewhere the Guatemalans called a “quetzal.” Beside the storefront glass was a single door. I opened it and entered.

Inside I found a room lit by bare lightbulbs suspended on long wires from a high ceiling. Here and there were tables of various sizes surrounded by folding chairs. Most of the tables were empty, but a few old men sat around a couple of them, playing dominoes.

Since I saw no sign of an office, I approached the nearest group of domino players. They all smiled and said hello. I returned their greetings in Spanish. “Would it be too distracting if I asked you men some questions?”

“It would be the most exciting thing to happen here all day,” said an old man in a Milan flattop straw hat. “I am Filipe, and this is Antonio and Jorge, and this is the other Jorge.”

“I am looking into the Arturo Toledo murder. Anybody here remember that?”

“Are you with the police?”

“No. I am looking into it privately. Do you remember anything about it?”

“Of course,” said the other Jorge. “That Doña Elena. Ay, what I would do for a few hours alone with her.”

“A few seconds should be enough in your case, old man,” said Filipe.

Even the other Jorge laughed.

Smiling, I said, “Did any of you know Alejandra Delarosa?”

Felipe said, “Everybody knows La Alejandra.”

“Really? Why is that?”

“She is La Alejandra.”

“I am sorry, but I do not understand.”

“‘La Alejandra,’” he said. “It means ‘defender of the people.’
 
”

“I see. Like Alexander the Great.”

“Except more greater.”

“Do all of you think of her that way?”

Everybody nodded.

“Because she killed Toledo?”

The one called Antonio said, “May he rest in hell.” Then he leaned to one side and pretended to spit on the ground.

The first Jorge laid a domino on the table.

“Do you mind if I watch you play?”

Felipe shrugged expansively. “If you are so bored that such a thing seems like a good idea, go ahead.”

I pulled a chair over from a nearby table and sat. The men resumed their play. I pretended to be interested while I thought about what they had already said. “Everyone knows La Alejandra. She is La Alejandra.” They spoke of her as if she were still a member of the community, an esteemed neighbor. I thought that was interesting.

After a few minutes I said, “Why do you think she only took two hundred thousand dollars?”

They looked at one another with smiles. “That,” said old Filipe, “is only what they told the people on the television.”

“You think she took more?”

Everybody nodded. “Much more,” said Felipe.

“What makes you think that?”

“Look around yourself. Could all of this be purchased for two hundred thousand dollars?”

“Felipe,” said Antonio. “You talk too much.”

I glanced around the room. With its bare walls, concrete floor, and naked lightbulbs, I thought perhaps it could indeed be purchased for two hundred thousand, especially in that neighborhood. But the old men were clearly proud of their surroundings, so I kept that opinion to myself.

“Are you saying Alejandra bought this place?”

“Perhaps Antonio is right,” replied Felipe. “I should just play dominoes.”

The old men were clearly proud of the Delarosa woman. They reminded me of a few people I had met who dropped Haley’s name whenever possible, even though they barely knew her. I decided maybe I could play on their pride a little.

I said, “I understand. She is a murderer after all. Some things are too shameful to discuss.”

“Shameful!” said Felipe. All the old men glared at me. “La Alejandra is forever clothed with honor.”

“Please forgive my ignorance. I misunderstood.”

“Indeed you did. La Alejandra has done great things for her people in exile. She repaired the roof over at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. She supports this place of sanctuary and the food bank and the legal resource center and the South Alvarado Free Clinic. And the most important thing of all, she took vengeance for the disappeared. And you sit there and speak of shame.”

“Truly, I had no idea.”

“Obviously not. Who are you, anyway? If you are
La Migra
, you have come to the wrong place. Everybody here is an American now.”

“No, no. Nothing like that. I am just a guy who heard about what happened, and I always wondered what became of her.”

“That is something you will never know. No person in the barrio would betray her.”

“So she still lives here?”

“Felipe, you old fool,” seethed Antonio. “Be silent.”

All of the old men sat still and stared at me. The men at the other table did the same. Clearly I would get no further information there, and although not one of the men was below the age of seventy, from the looks in their eyes, I decided it was wise to go.

18

Forty minutes later,
I pulled into the garage at El Nido and parked between the Bentley and the stretch Mercedes. I strolled over to the guesthouse, changed into a pair of swimming trunks, grabbed a towel and a pair of goggles, and then headed for the pool.

A couple of years before Haley and I met, she had installed the regulation twenty-five-yard, short-course-length pool, three lanes wide. I had always been a runner, but Haley loved to swim and usually did forty laps in the morning before breakfast, alternating between a crawl and a breaststroke. Watching her slip almost effortlessly through the water had gotten me interested, and after a while I learned to enjoy it almost as much as she did.

I stretched a little on the flagstone apron, then dove in and did one hundred laps. While I swam, I thought about the fact that the old men at the Guatemalan social club believed Alejandra Delarosa was still living in their neighborhood. I wondered if it might be true and decided it was certainly possible. After all, where better to hide from the law than in the most densely populated urban area on the West Coast, among several hundred thousand people who think you’re a hero?

When I was done swimming, I climbed the ladder to find Simon sitting in the shade of a market umbrella at one of the tables. He was reading the
Times
.

Toweling myself off as I walked over, I said, “What ho, Jeeves. Any news of Parliament?”

He stood as I came, looking at me over the top of his reading glasses. “I take your Wodehouse reference, Mr. Cutter. It is very humorous.”

He remained standing as I settled into a chair. On the table between us were two glasses of lemonade and two plates with ham-and-swiss sandwiches.

I said, “Is one of these for me?”

“Yes. While preparing a meal for myself, I glanced outside and noticed you were exercising. It seemed improper to consume food from your larder without including you.”

“It’s not my larder. It’s Haley’s.”

“As you say.”

“Let’s dig in.”

“As you wish, Mr. Cutter.”

He sat across from me, folded the paper precisely placed it on the table, then went to work on his sandwich. I couldn’t help noticing the paper was turned to the employment section of the classifieds.

I said, “Are you looking for a job in the UK?”

“I had considered it.”

The day was fast approaching when I wouldn’t see Simon or Teru anymore, when I wouldn’t live in Haley’s guesthouse anymore, when the connections to my life with her would be finally and completely severed. I couldn’t bear the thought of staying on, and yet, strangely, when I thought of Simon leaving, my stomach seemed to ball up into a knot. Haley had led a splendid life, a life of honor and integrity and courage, and I wouldn’t let her memory be tarnished, not for all the money in the world. But something about Simon’s newspaper made the coming changes seem more real. I felt a wave of loneliness. It was a dangerous feeling, which led back to dark and disconnected places.

To distract myself, I told Simon about my morning at Pico-Union. When I was done, he said, “What are your plans now?”

“I’ve spoken with her neighbors. I think the next logical step is to see what her victim has to say, but I can’t figure out how to get to Doña Elena. With my background, the congressman isn’t going to let me get within a mile of his wife.”

Simon took a small bite of his sandwich, chewed it thoughtfully, swallowed, then said, “Perhaps something could be arranged.”

About an hour later, after I had rinsed the swimming pool’s chlorine off in the shower and slipped back into my jeans and black-silk T-shirt, there was a knock at the front door of the guesthouse. When I opened it, Simon stood there in his perfectly tailored suit. He handed me a folded piece of cream-colored stationary. On it were his embossed initials centered at the top, and below that a handwritten address in Beverly Hills and the time, 2:30 p.m. The penmanship was impeccable.

I looked at him.

He said, “Mrs. Montes will be expecting you.”

“How’d you do this?”

“One does have one’s contacts.”

“Buttling contacts?”

He offered a slight smile, turned, and walked away.

I called after him, “You might as well explain this. I’ll find out how you did it sooner or later.”

Simon lifted one hand slightly to signify he had heard me and kept walking. I watched his back for few more seconds, suddenly aware of how much I didn’t know about the man. What kind of butler could arrange a meeting with one of Hollywood’s leading stars on an hour’s notice? I should have known Haley would never hire a butler who was simply a butler. She had always surrounded herself with interesting people, and it seemed Simon had more going on beneath the surface than I had realized.

But a 2:30 appointment didn’t leave much time to consider Simon’s background, so my thoughts shifted to strategy. I decided not to bother changing into something more formal. During my time as a chauffeur and a bodyguard, I’d found the well-to-do in California often affect a casual wardrobe. Besides, there wasn’t time. I had to leave immediately to make the appointment. I set out across the grounds toward the garage. I decided to borrow Haley’s Bentley. Blue jeans and a black T-shirt were one thing, but it was Beverly Hills, after all. I was pretty sure it would help break the ice with the movie star and the congressman if I met certain standards.

I took the 5 to the Hollywood Freeway, then the Santa Monica exit. I bore right at the fork to cut over to Sunset Boulevard and then turned right again on Benedict Canyon to climb up into the hills. Rolls-Royces, Maseratis, Jaguars, Porsches, and Ferraris ebbed and flowed around me. The Bentley didn’t get a second look. There were no curbs or sidewalks, just the asphalt road winding up and up between ten-foot-tall stone and stucco walls and perfectly manicured hedges penetrated every two or three hundred yards by pairs of imposing gates. I took a hairpin turn to the right and then veered off the canyon road at Wallingford Drive. About five hundreds yards farther up, I reached the Montes’s estate.

There was the usual pair of gates with a speaker box discretely mounted on a post to the left of the driveway apron. I pushed a button marked “Call,” and a woman’s voice came on to say, “May I help you?”

I told her who I was. She asked me to wait. A moment later, the gates began to swing in, and her voice came from the speaker again. “Ms. Montes is looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Cutter. Please drive up the hill and bear to your right at the first fork. You’ll see a gravel area when you arrive at the house. Park there and come to the front door.”

Everything was exactly as the woman had described. When I got out of the Bentley, I was standing before a classic example of the fifties modern style of architecture: a sleek collection of sheet-glass panes and limestone slabs balanced on steel poles. I climbed seventeen steps to the front door. Before I could push the button on the jamb beside it, a spectacular young woman opened the door and smiled at me.

She was about five foot ten and slender in an athletic way. She wore a black blouse of some kind of elastic material that showed her figure to full advantage. The blouse was tucked into white slacks decorated along the sides with rows of
botonadura
, the silver buttons typically seen along the legs of mariachi trousers. On her feet were a pair of white leather boots. A pair of large silver hoops dangled from her ears. Around her waist was a black silk sash. My thoughts turned to Salma Hayek, whom I had seen with Haley at a party about a year before. But this woman was much younger than Ms. Hayek. I put her at about twenty-three or twenty-four, about ten years younger than I was.

“Mr. Cutter,” she said, “I’m Olivia Soto, Ms. Montes’s personal assistant.”

“What an interesting name,” I said. “I used to know a guy named Walnut Tree, but everybody called him Wally.” In Spanish, “Olivia Soto” meant “olive grove.”