Lydia Millet - Ghost Lights

“You found him?”

“We know where they’re holding him, yes. Taking my own car, Sarah. Binadu’s got the VW. Later.”

He drove a small, open jeep, making swift, jerky turns until they got out onto the highway. Hal held onto the door handle. The exhaust of other cars made him cough.

He resolved to act as T.’s staunchest ally. He would tell the diplomat a story that would raise his sympathies.

“He was obviously deeply affected by the death of his girlfriend. I’m not saying he’s in great shape emotionally. But he has no history of violence or anything like that. Not even a misdemeanor or an unpaid parking ticket.”

“Uh huh?”

“He’s a conscientious boss-type guy, my wife’s devoted to him. Right now, you’ll see, he’s unshaven, he looks like a mountain man, but the guy I know wears three-thousand-dollar suits and drives a high-end Mercedes. So yeah, was he depressed when he came down here? Sure. Anyone would be. But that’s it. He needed a change. Decided to do some backpacking, so he hired a local guide to take him up the river. I think they were headed for some trailhead near the jaguar preserve.”

“Ways up there. Cockscomb? Past the confluence with the Swasey Branch? You can drive there in an hour. Tourists don’t tend to take the river route.”

“Their first night out the guide apparently died. Out of the blue. He suffered a heart attack or something. Stern said he found out in the morning, because they were each sleeping in their own tents. He went into shock or something, the death of the guide really threw him.”

“I bet.”

With his left hand on the wheel, Brady fumbled with his right to shake a cigarette from his pack and light it off the dash. He seemed distracted. Hal needed to get his attention.

“I mean here he was, this young guy from L.A., up a jungle river with just this one person who was his lifeline. And that lifeline suddenly disappears. Plus the fact, this guy Stern, over the past few months, is like a death magnet. Everyone close to him dies. Or gets debilitated. My wife told me the father left the mother — this aging frat boy left the mother, you know, his wife of so many years, to be a gay stripper in Key West. Then the girlfriend dies, of some heart condition he didn’t even know she had. This woman, by the way, was twenty-three and ran marathons. His mother tried to O.D. but ended up losing her mind. She’s got dementia or something. His dog gets hit by a car. Even his business partner ditched him.”

“Rough year.”

A spark of interest. Either the cigarette or the drama was putting Brady in a better mood.

“So anyway, after he found the guide dead Stern went into shock I guess, and eventually he dragged the body back down to the boat. We’re talking, for miles. I did that hike, looking for him. It was exhausting even without a 200-pound dead weight to haul. I guess he wrapped it up in the tent and got it all the way down to the river, where he put it back in the boat. But then later the boat’s propeller snapped and he ditched it against the bank, body and all, and tried to hike out. He almost died too. It was a close call for him.”

Brady nodded, negotiated a pothole. The car jumped.

“The guide was older, in his sixties I guess? It was a freak thing, but there’s no way it was anything other than natural causes. A couple days later the boat floated down to the ocean, but by then there was no body in it.”

“No body,” said Brady. “At all? Huh. Problematic.”

“The guide’s brother, I met him, I mean he isn’t bringing charges or anything. It was called in by some neighbor lady or something who has a beef with Americans. I don’t even know what they’re holding him on.”

“We’ll find out. Don’t worry.”

They drove in silence for a minute or two. Cars were smaller here than at home, smaller, older, more banged-up. The road was called a highway, but as in Mexico there was no fencing alongside to keep out stray animals. The corpses of roadkill appeared every few hundred yards, here a dog, there what seemed to be a raccoon.

“You know anything about a military incursion into the jungle down there, by the way?” he asked Brady.

“Come again?”

“A military incursion.”

“Whose military?”

“Ours.”

“When?”

“I think maybe yesterday. Or the day before.”

Brady laughed abruptly.

“Uh, that’d be a no.”

“I think there was one, though.”

“I’d know. Trust me. This is a very small country.”

“I heard they were doing a flyover. Some alleged guerrilla camp of Mayans, from over the border.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“If you say so.”

“Who told you this, anyway?”

Hal looked away from him to his own side of the road. There were flat, ugly fields stretching out beside him to the east, while to the west rose the low mountains.

“A German schoolteacher,” he said slowly.

“What?”

“Long story.”

“I’m all ears. We still got half an hour to go.”

Hal told him about the armed forces, the boat trip, the hike. He told him what Hans had said as he lay down on the boat’s bench at the end, his stomach full of warm liquid.

“Aural hallucinations. Fatigue can do that to you.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“But then what about what his wife said? Yesterday?”

“Guy sounds like a weapons hobbyist. Maybe he likes to spin tales to impress the little lady.”

“Huh,” said Hal. “I don’t know, Jeff. I mean he did bring the Marines to me.”

Then it struck him that this discussion might be impairing his credibility. He should change the subject.

But Brady did it for him.

“What do you do, anyway? Stateside?”

Hal was surprised. He was sure he had mentioned it.

“IRS.”

“Kidding.”

“Why, you delinquent?”

“My brother works at the Service Center in Austin.”

“Government service runs in your family, huh?”

“That and gallbladder problems.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

By the time they got off the highway and headed into Belize City he felt reasonably confident that Brady was won over. He had recognized, in Brady, the cynical posture of high-waisted Rodriguez. And by treating Brady essentially as he treated Rodriguez — as though they were brothers-in-arms, jaded yet hearty mercenaries in civil service’s trench warfare — he was in the process of securing Brady’s confidence.

He coughed, breathing exhaust fumes as they made their way down a narrow street behind a rickety pickup full of bags of garbage.

“No unleaded gas around here,” said Brady. “Not yet. Pity. OK. Not far now.” He pulled into a parking space abruptly and braked. “Here we go. Follow me, and don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.”

“Draconian.”

“Only because I’ve been in the situation. Trust me.”

As it happened Hal was made to wait in the lobby, near a uniformed guard standing beside a young woman’s desk, while Brady was ushered into the interior. The chairs were uncomfortable, the walls gray and the ceilings low. On a bulletin board was a picture of a wanted man with a banner above his head: FBI TEN MOST WANTED FUGITIVE. Beneath, three headings: DESCRIPTION. CAUTION. REWARD.

For a second it seemed to Hal that Belize was an outpost of America. It had been British Honduras, previously. But the British were nowhere.

An overhead fan whirred, the blades ticking monotonously against the dangling chain, but did little to aerate the room.

He wished he had a glass of ice water.

Finally Brady came out again, a portly man in shirtsleeves beside him, sweat stains under his arms.

“Hal, Jorge Luis. Hal Lindley, U.S. Internal Revenue Service.”