David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

Abatangelo, sitting with his coffee, listened in. Figuring Waxman had invented this account on the spot, he thought: Not bad.

“So you came up to ask him on the night of his daughter’s quince,” Gayle, the short-haired woman, said. At the sound of her voice, Waxman recalled her last name: Fruth. She rolled her eyes. “Impeccable timing.”

“It’s bullshit,” Smathers said. He was still smiling.

“I was not aware,” Waxman said, “there was a party planned here for this evening.”

Eloise Beaulieu made a face. Gayle Fruth groaned. Koch said, “Hell’s bells, give him the damn release,” and pushed his empty glass across the bar, calling out to the bartender, “Un otro, amigo.” After suffering a prodding elbow from Gayle Fruth, he added, “Por favor.”

Eloise relented with a dispirited sigh and handed the release to Waxman. He unfolded it and read.

“He’s opening some youth center for gang members, about which he said just about what you’d expect,” Gayle Fruth said. “You know, education, family, free enterprise.”

“Tradition is a buttress for the soul,” Smathers intoned, quoting.

“Fortune favors the brave,” said Koch. He was still waiting for his margarita, hands playing bongo on the bar. “But no spanking.”

“It was preachy,” Eloise agreed. “But, per usual, they ate it up.”

“They,” Koch said, accepting his refreshened margarita from the bartender with glowing eyes. “Who were ‘they,’ exactly?”

“I think it’s a good deal,” Gayle Fruth interjected. “I think he has the best interest of those kids at heart. Convinced me, anyway. He wants them off the street, give them work. Taggers, gangbangers. Nuestra Familia, I mean, that’s the alternative, right? Money’s out of his own pocket, so what’s to bitch about? Not like we’re going to get taxed for it.”

“To Bing,” Smathers said, lifting his glass.

“Bing and Phil,” Koch corrected.

Waxman put the release away. From a different pocket he removed one of the clippings he’d brought along from the accordion file Aleris had brought him from the refugee center. One of the ones with a picture of Victor Facio. He showed it to Eloise, knowing the others would crane to look.

“See him anywhere? At the speech?” he asked.

The bartender, cleaning glasses, looked up from his work. He glanced at the picture and then up at Waxman. Their eyes met.

“His name is Victor Facio,” Waxman said.

The bartender looked away.

“Pretty dapper dude for a squatter,” Smathers remarked.

“I don’t remember him,” Eloise said, studying the snapshot. “I mean, there was a real crowd. Not like here, but big.” She shrugged. “So who knows? Could be.”

Waxman said, “Thank you,” and put the clipping away.

“My point,” Smathers said, “is that this story you’ve handed us about chasing down some squatters doesn’t jive with that picture. Am I right?”

The bartender picked up a hand towel, ambled toward the storage room in the rear and disappeared.

“Thanks. See you around,” Waxman said to Eloise, then nodded to the others to include them in his farewell.

“Why do I get the distinct impression I’ve just been fucked with?” Smathers said.

“Come on,” Koch responded, sliding off his stool and slapping his companion on the shoulder. “Ground floor, tapas galore.”

Waxman returned to the booth and sat across from Abatangelo again. Shortly the other reporters trailed out on their way to the food, making halfhearted gestures of farewell. Eloise in particular. At the doorway, she called back, “I’ll call you tomorrow, Berty. We’ll chat.”

Once they were gone, Waxman leaned across the table toward Abatangelo and whispered, “He’s here. The bartender, the way he reacted when I said Facio’s name- like a switch went off.” He leaned back again, gazed into the distance and sipped his coffee. “I feel confident now.”

“You don’t look confident,” Abatangelo said, smiling. “You look like you just swallowed your wallet.”

The bartender returned from the storeroom and resumed humming to himself as he wiped down the bar. A moment later, a large man in a gray polyester suit appeared from the hallway and sidled up beside Abatangelo’s and Waxman’s table. He loomed over them, rabbit-eyed, his face slack and square. His hands were misshapen, as though from numerous bone breaks. “Vengan conmigo,” he said, gesturing for them to follow.

The man wasn’t one of the bodyguards who’d accompanied Rolando Moreira into the hotel. Moving with a hulking swagger that reminded Abatangelo of prison, he led them to the elevator, which was waiting. Inside, he turned a key in the control panel and punched seven. Together, the three of them stared up silently as the numbers overhead lit and faded one by one, marking their passage floor to floor. The elevator shuddered to a whispered halt and the heavy doors slid open.

The hallway receded in both directions. Brass sconces lined the wall above gilded wainscoting and sedge carpet. The smell of a recent vacuuming still hung in the air, a prickle of dust. Waxman and Abatangelo followed the lumbering man in the gray suit to the end of the hall, where he rapped three times on a large white door. A slight but square-featured landeno youth answered. He wore a ruffled formal shirt, an Edwardian bow tie. His tuxedo trousers bore a crisp press and his patent bluchers shone. Stepping back, he extended his hand toward the interior.

The entry opened onto a suite that was elegant and vast, with furnishings of raw silk. Lilies and dahlias rose from large vases. Above an ample buffet, a crystal chandelier with prismed rhombs showered tiny white reflections across each wall. The man in the gray suit chose a seat in the corner and gestured for Waxman and Abatangelo to sit as well. They waited in silence until the front door opened again and Rolando Moreira charged into the room, followed by a man Abatangelo recognized from his aging photograph as Victor Facio.

“Who are you?” Moreira shouted. His fists were clenched, his skin flushed. Before either Abatangelo or Waxman could answer, Facio placed a restraining hand on Moreira’s arm.

“Rolando, please,” he said.

Facio had a wiry, athletic frame and his voice seemed suited to a larger man. The eyes were hard and intense and disembodied from the rest of his facial expression, which remained dressed into a smile. There was a feral intelligence about him that Abatangelo guessed was the result of long schooling by foreign handlers, men who’d molded him to project an urbanity that might disguise an unseemly youth. Given Waxman’s profile, Abatangelo knew the man was likely in his fifties, but he looked considerably younger. As though the life he’d led had preserved him somehow, like a vampire.

Moreira turned toward the buffet table, trying to contain his rage. Abatangelo withdrew from his pocket one of the snapshots he’d taken of Shel. “We’re looking for someone,” he said, edging toward Facio. “There’s a rumor going around that an exchange is to be made. The woman you see in the photograph here for a man named Frank Maas.”

Moreira spun around. “This is my daughter’s quince- ”

“Rolando,” Facio said again, no louder than before. He didn’t say please this time. Moreira stormed over to a chair and dropped into it like a chastened boy. Removing a cigar and a gold lighter from the pockets of his white tuxedo jacket, he bit off the end of the cigar, drew a flame from the lighter, and began puffing smoke.

Facio came forward and accepted the picture from Abatangelo. After only a moment’s regard he handed it back.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the article that appeared in the paper today, would it?”