Laura Caldwell - The Good Liar

Liza refocused the scope and watched his retreating figure. The man had hair that was messy, as if he’d just roused himself from bed. He wore jeans and a lightweight leather jacket, despite the sticky heat. She’d seen this guy before, sometime yesterday. She remembered because of the jacket. Was he simply a neighbor? But he didn’t look Brazilian, nor did he look like he could afford the neighborhood.

Liza brought the scope back to the house and stared at the spot where the man had squatted to adjust his shoe. A knowing smile took over her face.

She left the apartment, locking the four double-cylinder dead-bolts and punching in the numbers on the keypad to arm the fingerprint-ID lock, all of which had been installed after the purchase of the apartment. She left the building and crossed the street, walking quickly past Franco’s house, then turned at the end of the block and walked back the same way. On the second pass, she saw what she was looking for—a rock in the tiny front lawn, right by a post of the black iron fence. She bent slightly and scooped up the rock. She took it upstairs with her and settled into an interior room with no windows, where she flicked on the lights.

She studied the rock, then turned it over and saw the false bottom. She smiled again as she removed it. A tiny camera had been installed, no doubt to take photos of guests arriving at Franco’s house. The rock was simple in design, the color too uniform to look real. If Gustavo and his crew were already in power, with a large security detail in place, the device would have been discovered easily.

She switched off the lights, left the apartment again and walked one block away. She hid herself in a dark corner of an alley where she had a half view of the street. She waited for an hour, then another. It was a Friday night, and a few couples strolled home from dinner, tipsy and laughing. She disappeared deeper into the alley at those times. Sometimes it made her feel too lonely to see couples. She hadn’t been a part of one in a long time. Not ever in her adult years, if she admitted it.

Her loneliness had been hammered home a few weeks ago when Kate had married Scott, who was a friend of theirs from high school. Scott was a decent enough guy, both in looks and personality, but in Liza’s opinion he wasn’t a match for Kate’s wit and smarts. Maybe Liza was just being protective, or maybe she simply felt the sting of still being single—and very much alone—while her best friend charged into marriage and family.

After another hour from her vantage point in the alley, Liza saw what she was looking for, the man in the leather jacket. She’d had a feeling he’d be back sometime tonight. Franco often had people over for drinks on Fridays, and the man probably expected his little rock to have taken a few snapshots of the guests. She watched, amused, as the man ambled by Franco’s place, then did his bend-and-adjust-shoe technique. But this time, he didn’t rise as quickly. She saw his hand dart onto the lawn, grasping for an object that was no longer there.

He had the sense not to linger and was soon walking the other way. Liza tailed him until he reached a busy avenida. She came closer to him. The noise from the restaurants and bars hid the sound of her footfalls. Soon they were shoulder to shoulder.

He stopped abruptly and turned to her. “May I help you?” he said in Portuguese, but with a very distinct accent. Russian.

“I think you may have lost something,” she answered in English. She paused to make sure he understood the language and saw from his eyes that he did.

“I think you are mistaken,” he said in English. But there was anxiety in his green eyes.

She flashed the rock at him, then closed her fist and crossed her arms. “You need to come with me.”

He hesitated. His eyes darted toward her arms. He wanted that rock back.

“A few questions, then I give you back what you’ve lost.”

The man glanced around. Liza scanned the crowd with him. Did he have backup? She pulled up her shirt slightly, just enough to show him the pocket Glock tucked in the waistband of her jeans. It was one of the smallest Glocks available, one that could only be handled by the sharpest of shots. Which she was.

At the sight of it, the man’s shoulders drooped and he pressed his lips together. He wasn’t armed.

“I will give you back what is yours,” she said.

“Yes, okay,” he answered.

It turns out, Aleksei Ivanov was a terrible spy. Actually, he wasn’t a spy at all, just a journalist who’d been convinced he could become one.

Ordering him to walk ahead of her, Liza directed the man from the streets of Gávea, into the neighboring favela of Rocinha. The vertical streets were winding and barely shoulder width, lined with shanty-style houses. The sheer volume of people and sounds and smells was overwhelming. The man had clearly never been in Rocinha before, she could tell from the way he flinched at the shouts from the children, many smiling despite their plight.

He looked back at her once, and she could see he was analyzing his chances of bolting. “Keep going,” she said, flashing her Glock again.

The man looked from the pistol to her face, then continued his trudge through Rocinha. They were openly stared at by the residents of the favela. The adults looked wary, the children shouted for money or cameras.

At one point, Liza saw the man reach for his pocket.

“Don’t,” she said in a sharp bark.

The man turned to her with a slightly pained expression. “I don’t have a weapon. I just thought I would give them some money.”

Liza felt herself soften, but she shook her head. “They’ll mob you if you do.” She gestured at him to keep walking.

When they reached the top of one of the coiling streets, Liza stopped the man and nodded at a shanty. The walls were covered by haphazardly placed tiles, most of which were crumbling or discolored with soot. A young man stepped outside the structure. He wore a red cloth tied around his head. His eyes were black, and to Liza, they appeared dead. He was the kind of man who scared her most—one with nothing to lose—but he was her contact in this neighborhood, someone who took money for information or accommodation or just about anything. His name was Faustino, and despite his meager standard of living, he knew lots of people in this corrupt town. Liza had found that he could get nearly anything accomplished for the right price.

“Faustino,” Liza said.

He nodded.

Surreptitiously, she took some réis out of her pocket and passed it to the man.

“May I use your residence?” she said in Portuguese.

He nodded again.

Liza directed the Russian inside. The house was just a room, really, with three dingy, uncovered mattresses shoved against the far wall. A sink and toilet, rarities in this part of town, stood unceremoniously against another wall, next to mildewed cardboard boxes filled with clothes. One wood chair, old and battered, sat in the middle of the room. Liza directed the man to sit. She turned over an empty plastic milk crate and sat across from him.

“Who are you working for?” she asked.

The man looked less frightened now, more weary. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Why were you surveying the home of João Pedro Franco?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he repeated.

“Why were you taking photographs of Franco’s home?”

He shook his head. Same answer.

They went on like this for an hour. Liza could have gone long into the night and through the next day. She’d been trained that way. But this man had not, and he soon became exhausted. Liza could see it in the way he kept searching the room, looking for an out. There were many, but apparently he hadn’t been educated in how to run. More than anything, she could tell he wanted the rock back. It was tucked in the pocket of her jeans, and Liza could see his glance continually coming back to that area of her body. The gun was there, too—in her waistband. He might have been staring at that, but Liza also wanted to think that his glances had something to do with her looks. Surprisingly, she hoped this hapless man found her attractive. There was something about him that appealed to her, an air of having seen too much, incongruously combined with the fear of having something to protect. That fear, she decided, meant there was still newness in him. She imagined that he had not been beaten down by his profession the way Liza had.