Thomas Hoover - Life blood

Except for the occasional unwanted intrusions. Various dark-eyed low-cut Ladino divorcees, about half a dozen in all, hanging out at the bar with heavy perfume and too much jewelry, kept coming over purportedly to marvel over our private feast (or was it Steve's big brown eyes). He returned their attentions with his polite and perfect Spanish, but I despised them. In any case, they were shameless. Not remembering quite enough Espanol, however, the best I could do was just to put my hand on his and give them the evil eye. It seemed to work, though what I really wanted to do was hold up a cross the way you do to ward off vampires…

"Hey, check out Orion," he said finally leaning back, an easy, delicious finger aimed at that sprawling constellation. I looked up at the canopy of stars, and sure enough, the hunter and his sword dominated the starry sky above like a stalwart centurion, guarding us. "I always know I'm in the tropics when it's right overhead."

"Honey, this has been wonderful," I declared. "Thank you so much." I moved around and kissed him. "It's exactly the attitude adjustment I needed."

"Well"-he smiled back-"now I guess we've got some organizing to do. So tell me everything you left out back there at the hotel. I know you were holding off."

I was feeling increasingly hyper, probably from the high- octane chocolate, but I proceeded to recount all my findings about Alex Goddard and Quetzal Manor. Then I moved on to Colonel Ramos and how he'd threatened Carly and me about my film. Finally, I told him my deep belief that Colonel Ramos and a couple of his goons were obviously the ones who'd roughed up Lou and taken Sarah.

"Bad scene," he said when I finally paused for breath. He was toying with his cup and running his fingers through his sandy hair, in that "deep thought" mode of his. "Way I see it, this just sounds like a classic case of selling kids. To me, that's right up there with murder and grand larceny."

"Well, I also firmly believe it's all tied in with Alex Goddard's clinic here, or whatever it is. The place Sarah called Ninos del Mundo on her landing card. I'll bet you anything that's where Ramos has taken her."

"You know," he said, his brow a perfect furrow, eyes narrowed, "about the babies you saw, there've been press stories over the last few years about Americans being attacked in Guatemala on suspicion of trying to kidnap Maya children out in the villages, to put up for adoption. But I've never seen any proof of it. I've always thought it just might have been dumb gringos who don't know the culture. They go poking around out in the countryside and stupidly say the wrong thing. Maybe using schoolbook Spanish nobody out there really understands. But now this makes me wonder if-"

"Love, those babies I saw up at Quetzal Manor are not kidnapped Indian children, trust me. They're Caucasian as vanilla snow cones. Try again."

"I get your point," he said quickly. "But let me relate the facts of life down here. When you've got some Guatemalan colonel behind something, you'd better think twice about how many rocks you turn over."

"Funny, but that's exactly what some guy at the embassy named Barry Morton said to me."

"And you'd better listen. This is the country that turned the word 'disappear' into a new kind of verb. People get 'disappeared.' I actually knew some of them, back in the late eighties. One dark night an Army truck rolls into a village, and when the torture and… other things are over with, a few Maya are never heard from again." He looked at me. "You saw my pictures of that village in the Huehuetenango Department, Tzalala, where the Army mutilated and murdered half the-"

"I know all about that." It was chilling to recall his gruesome photos. "But I'm going to track down Alex Goddard's clinic, no matter what. That's where they've taken Sarah, I'm sure of it. I just may need some help finding it."

He grimaced. "Damn, I've got to head back to Belize by noon tomorrow." Then his look brightened. "But, hey, I finish my shoot Wednesday, so I can drive back here on Thursday. Then on Friday maybe we could-"

"Come on, love, I can't just sit around till the end of the week. What am I going to do till then?" The very thought made me itchy. "I need to find out if Ninos del Mundo, the place Sarah put on her original landing card is for real. Her card said it's somewhere in the Peten, the rain forest. If I could find somebody who-"

"Okay, look." He was thinking aloud. "How about this? There's a guy here in town who owes me a favor. A big one. He screwed me out of twenty grand in the U.S. We were going to start a travel magazine-I think I told you about that-but then he took my money and split the country. He ended up down here and went to work for the CIA-till they sacked him. After that he leased a helicopter and started some kind of bullshit tourist hustle. He sure as hell knows what's going on. Name's Alan Dupre. The prick. Maybe I could give him a call and we could get together for a late drink. He's got an easy number these days: 4-MAYAN."

"How's he going to help?"

"Trust me. He's our guy."

I leaned back and closed my eyes, my imagination drifting. In that brief moment, my mind floated back to yesterday afternoon at Lou's loft, and Sarah. Her hallucinations still haunted me. What had happened to her in the rain forest? And why would she say she wanted to go back?

Then I snapped back. "All right. Try and ring him if you think he can help. Right now I need all I can get."

He got up and worked his way to the phone, past the crowded bar, while I tried to contemplate the night sky. I looked up again, hoping to see Orion, but now a dark cloud had moved in, leaving nothing but deepening blackness. He'd said there was a storm brewing, part of an out-of-season hurricane developing in the Caribbean, so I guessed this was the first harbinger.

"Tonight's out, but tomorrow's okay." He was striding back. "Crack of dawn. Which for him is roughly about noon. We'll have a quick get-together and then I've got to run. Really. But if this guy doesn't know what's going on down here, nobody does. He's probably laid half those hot tomatillos there at the bar. The man has his sources, if you get my meaning."

"Then let's go back to the glorious Camino Real." I took his hand. "We'll split the check. At the moment, even that seems romantic."

"I'm still thinking about-"

"Don't. Don't think." I touched his lips, soft and moist, then kissed him. An impulsive but deeply felt act. "We've all had enough thinking for one day."

Alan Dupre didn't ring till almost ten-thirty the next morning, and I had the feeling even that was a stretch. He then offered to meet us in the Parque Concordia, right downtown. As I watched him ambling toward our bench, my first impression was: Why'd we bother?

The man appeared to be in his early forties, puffy-eyed and pink-cheeked with discount aviator shades, looking like a glad-handing tourist just down to Central America for a weekend of unchaperoned bacchanals. The flowered sport shirt, worn outside the belt, gave him the aura of a tout insufficiently attired without a can of Coors in hand.

How can this be progress? I'm down here hoping to find Sarah, and I end up in a trash-filled park meeting some expat operator.

Steve had explained that the main benefit of Alan Dupre's CIA gig was that he did learn how to fly a helicopter. With that skill he'd ended up starting a tourist agency in Guatemala City using an old Bell he leased: "Mayan Pyramids from the Air." Mainly, though, he was a self-styled bon vivant who knew people.

"Steve the brave." On came Dupre's mirthless smile as he approached a jaunty spring entering his step.

"Alan, any friend of yours has got to be brave." Steve just stared at him.

Dupre had the kind of empty grin that looked like it'd been rehearsed in his high school bathroom mirror. It was thin, kind of forked and dangerous, and this morning its plaster quality undermined any attempts at honesty. Maybe dealing with complaining tourists every day of your life did that to you.