Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

“What did this man look like?” said Liquida.

“As I said he was very big. A black man.”

Liquida immediately understood. “So what happened to Maricela?”

“Do you know her?”

“No, I just heard you say her name.”

“Oh. I think she left with the two men.”

“So they must have been friends of hers?”

“I don’t think so. They were not locals. I have never seen them before. Americanos , I think.”

“The black man, you say he was big,” said Liquida.

“Mucho grande,” she said.

“Was he bald? Did he have a shiny head?”

“Do you know him?”

“No, but I think I may have seen him around the neighborhood.”

“Then perhaps I am wrong. Maybe they are local. I offered them my house to rest, but Maricela said she wanted to go stay with the mayor.”

“She knows the mayor of San José?” A cold chill ran down Liquida’s spine.

“No.” The woman laughed. “It is a joke. He is a friend. His name is Lorenzo. In the neighborhood some people call him the mayor of Gringo Gulch because he knows everybody and everything. He lives a few blocks down that way.” She gestured with one hand in a general direction toward downtown.

Liquida would have asked her for Lorenzo’s last name, better yet, a map to his house and whether it was hooked up to propane. But to ask more questions was to invite suspicion.

Yesterday afternoon after arriving safely at Lorenzo’s apartment, the trauma of the event finally caught up with Maricela. She collapsed on a couch in his back room and slept all night. By the time she wakes up this morning, it is almost noon.

“I have to tell you, Maricela, I didn’t trust him,” says Goudaz. “And I tried to warn Katia. She wouldn’t listen to me.” He is talking about Emerson Pike. “He was asking too many personal questions. Anybody want a beer?”

Herman raises his hand. “Yeah, I’ll have one.”

“How about you?”

“Not for me,” I say. We are seated around the dining table grabbing a bite, something Goudaz has whipped up, rice and chicken and some black beans. He seems to like to cook. After being under his roof for one night, it is hard to size him up completely. There is a bit of roguish cha risma to the man. You get the sense that he survives in the gap between the two cultures. It is difficult to say what Maricela thinks of him.

For the moment he has his head in the refrigerator. He comes out with two bottles of Imperial, knocks the caps off, and hands one of them to Herman as he takes a swig from the other.

Lorenzo doesn’t move fast, but he seems to get things done. The minute we arrived he found accommodations for us. One of the other tenants in the building is out of town. The mayor has the key and says the man won’t mind. Last night Herman and I sacked out on a bed and a rollaway in the other apartment.

It’s a little tight but it’ll work, at least for a few days, until we can figure out where we’re going. That will depend in large part on what we can find out from Maricela.

This morning I brief her on Katia’s predicament in California. We talk about the photographs from Colombia, Emerson Pike’s obsession with them, and his murder. She wants to know what Pike’s involvement in all of this was. I tell her we’re not sure. I don’t tell her about the FBI or the fact that I am now charged as a codefendant along with her daughter, only that we were interested in recovering the photographs from the camera at her house. But, of course they are now gone, destroyed in the fire.

She tells us that it was, in fact, her father who was in the photographs along with a man she calls Alim and several of his followers, who she believes were responsible for the attack at her house and the fire.

When I ask her where the photographs were taken, she becomes vague. She tells us she was always picked up at a rural bus stop by men in a small truck. It was a very long ride to the village in the jungle where her father was. It took most of a day and sometimes longer depending on the route they took and the condition of the mountain roads. According to Maricela she would often fall asleep and never paid much attention to where they were or their direction of travel.

“What makes you believe this man, Alim, is responsible for what happened at your house?” says Goudaz.

“I’m sure of it,” says Maricela. “He was very threatening. My father was certain he would never allow me to leave, to come home. So he made special arrangements for a man and a woman whom he trusted to accompany me to San José. When we arrived at the airport in Medellín, there was a message waiting for them, some emergency back home and they both had to return.”

“And so you figure Alim was responsible?” says Goudaz.

“Who else?”

“What is your father doing down there?” says the mayor.

“Excuse me, some of this information may be confidential,” I tell him. “Because it may have to do with a pending case. I know we’ve barged in on you without warning and I apologize for that, but I wonder if we could have just a few minutes alone.”

“Sure, I’m sorry,” says Goudaz. “I didn’t realize. Listen, you take all the time you need. I’ve got work to do in the study. Call me if you need me.”

“Thanks.”

He disappears down the hall and closes the door to the study.

“Thank you,” she says. “Lorenzo is a good friend, but he has a habit of making other people’s business his own.”

“I noticed,” I tell her. “You said Alim and his followers didn’t speak Spanish.”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you have any idea where they were from?”

“The country, no. The area, I believe, is the Middle East. Several times each day they would get down on their knees and pray, always with their heads toward the east.”

“So they were Muslim?” I say.

“I think so.”

Maricela tells Herman and me that her father has always been very secretive. He was absent for large periods of her life when she was a child, and he refused to tell her anything about what he was doing in Colombia. She doesn’t believe he is involved in any way with drugs, so she has dismissed this from the range of possibilities. All she knows is that whatever the project is, it is nearing completion. This was the reason he sent her home. He told her that he would be leaving Colombia shortly and would not be back. She got the very clear sense that it was to be their last visit.

The thought of never seeing him again, followed by the events at her house, has left her emotionally fragile. Trying to probe for details is difficult.

We talk for a while about what she saw when she was there in the encampment. There were a large number of men, most of them young, some of them children, along with young women in uniforms, many of them carrying rifles. She doesn’t believe they were part of the Colombian army and therefore were probably rebels. She knows that Colombia has for many years been involved in a revolution. Her father seemed to know many of these people and none of them seemed to be a threat to him, only Alim and his followers.

Suddenly she sits bolt upright in the chair. “Oh, my God, I forgot.” She stands and starts feeling in the pockets of her pants as if maybe she’s lost her keys or something.

“What is it?”

“It’s ah, something…someone gave me. I hope I didn’t lose it. With the fire and everything, I forgot.” She’s riffling through each pocket.

“What was it?” says Herman.

“Just a note.” She feels something in her right-front pocket. She reaches in, and when her hand comes out, she is holding a small folded piece of paper. “Thank God.” She takes a deep breath, turns her back for a moment, and walks a few steps from the table as she unfolds the note. It appears to be about the size of a single half sheet of paper, and I see what looks like handwriting in pencil on the page. As she reads Maricela keeps her back to us.