David Unger - The Mastermind

It is unclear to Guillermo how corruption this deep developed so quickly in Guatemala. When he looks at his country’s history, he is convinced it all began with the overthrow of Ubico, the end of the rule of law — yes, no matter how harsh it was. Most Guatemalan sociologists and historians blame the overthrow of the constitutionally elected Arbenz in 1954 for turning the tide.

He wishes he could wake up one day and feel good about being a Guatemalan, without thinking about soldiers, narcos, maras, cartels, whatever. Maybe no single event was the cause of it, but instead decades of horrible luck and corruption. He thinks back to how Guatemala changed during the two years that he and Rosa Esther were in New York: he left a country at relative peace and returned to mass murders and killings.

In his drunken stupor he has crazy dreams. One night he dreams he’s attending a beauty pageant in which the wrong girl gets crowned Miss Guatemala simply because one of the judges didn’t know how to add up his own points. When he gets up to decry the mistake, he is arrested and thrown into a prison without any clothes.

He knows that all Central Americans complain about their own countries. He remembers the time a pilot on a flight from Guatemala to Nicaragua landed at Comalapa Airport in San Salvador. The passengers had to disembark and wait two hours for another flight to Managua, their original destination. No apology, no explanation, no reimbursement. Just another screw-up.

And in the hospitals? Patients are given each other’s medicine and both die. There is no foul play, just incompetence, plain and simple.

There must be something in the Popol Vuh that set the whole thing off like this.

* * *

All of Guillermo’s dark thoughts are accompanied by rivers of liquor. He can’t control himself anymore. He has stopped exercising, stopped eating correctly. His diet consists of fast food, potato chips, and soft drinks. He doesn’t recall when he gave up riding his bicycle; his ankles and feet are swollen, red as beets.

Guillermo buys a new cell phone every couple of days and shares the number only with his secretary, his ex-wife, and Miguel. Within hours of each purchase he begins receiving more garbled messages and dropped calls. His anxiety is out of control. Someone wants him dead.

A month after Ibrahim and Maryam’s funeral, he asks Miguel if he knows anyone he can hire to be his bodyguard and chauffeur now that he is afraid to drive. Someone who can take him to work and back, who can fill the car with gas. Someone who can make sure he doesn’t become another statistic. Miguel instantly suggests that he hire Braulio Perdomo. Braulio was the driver of the blue Hyundai at the Centro Vasco, but Guillermo is too far gone to notice or care.

In addition to the hang-ups, Guillermo sometimes receives typed letters at the office saying things like, We are watching you, stop drinking cheap rum . Or, You were reading quite late last night (when in fact he had passed out with the night light on).

On rare occasions something nice and unexpected happens.

Ilán and Andrea call him for his forty-ninth birthday and sing “Las Mañanitas”—they are already so Mexican! For the first time in a while, Guillermo feels connected to them. He cries on the phone. The kids cry with him. Andrea blurts out that she misses him. Guillermo blows them each a kiss and tells them he wishes he could make things right for them. For the first time ever, they say that he has been a great father. He knows it’s not true, but still he feels embraced, even if their warmth is only related to his birthday.

* * *

During Braulio’s first morning on the job, he brings his new boss to his office. Before going down to meet him, Guillermo rinses his mouth with mouthwash. He has shaved his face for the first time in days. He is wearing a pressed suit, a clean shirt.

No one is in his office since he furloughed his secretary. He opens his mailbox and finds lots of bills and thick envelopes. He has stopped paying his office rent and is merely weeks away from being evicted. Does he care?

Less each day.

Among all the annoying mail he finds a plain white envelope with no return address. It is postmarked May 20.

Guillermo goes to the cabinet across from his desk where he stashes bottles of liquor and pours himself a big whiskey. He is sure this is another threat. He has half a mind not to open the envelope, but curiosity gets the better of him. Inside is a gorgeous color postcard of a beautiful beach with white sand, palm trees, a palapa, mostly blue skies, a couple of white cirrus clouds. Gold lettering on the bottom reads, Playa del Carmen, A Golden Beach on Mexico’s Riviera Maya . When Guillermo turns the card over, he sees that it is blank.

He looks back at the envelope. It has a cancelled Guatemalan stamp from the town of Chiquimula overlaid with the date. Why a card displaying a beach in Mexico?

He thinks maybe it’s a coded message from Maryam, announcing that she’s still alive, staying somewhere between Mexico and Guatemala. But he knows he’s just grasping at straws.

The night after his last big bender and Braulio’s arrogant phone call about the Monday morning pickup, Miguel calls Guillermo and says he needs to talk to him immediately.

“In private.”

“Here I am.”

“No phones. I’ll pick you up at six at your apartment and we’ll go to the usual watering hole downtown.”

* * *

They chitchat on the drive along Las Américas Boulevard and Reforma to Zone 1. The streets are empty of people and cars, not surprising for a Sunday night.

“What’s on your mind?” Guillermo asks as soon as they are seated at Café Europa.

“I want to know how you are.”

“To be honest, I wish I were dead.” He confesses to Miguel that he has thought long and hard about it and wants to take his life: he simply doesn’t want to live anymore. He knows that the cocktail of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and sleeping pills, plus all the booze, are not helping him to think clearly, but he has nothing to keep him alive. Not even his children — the birthday call was, after all, an exception.

“My life is over,” Guillermo says, without much emotion. He has just downed three straight shots of Flor de Caña rum. When his eyes meet the waiter’s, he orders two more shots.

Miguel is sipping Ron Zacapa, to give his friend company. It is his first and only drink of the night. “But you must consider your children—”

“They would be better off without me.”

“How can you say that?”

“I know. They are doing well in Mexico City. Rosa Esther is a marvelous mother. When I call to talk to them, I get the feeling that I am pulling them away from something they would rather be doing.”

“But this is natural. They are angry at you.” Miguel is not only a self-proclaimed facilitator and the head of his own private spying network, but also a bit of a psychologist. “They would never recover if you were to simply kill yourself.”

Guillermo nods. He remembers their voices on his birthday. Sweet. They were concerned. He looks back at Miguel and nearly forgets why they are there. “I don’t know anything about you. Are you married? Do you have children?”

“None of that matters. You know you can trust me.”

Guillermo answers this comment with a blink.

Miguel pats him on the shoulders. “My private life is so boring. I’ve been married to Inés Argueta for thirty-eight years. We have four children, all in their thirties. Two of them, the girls, are living in the States, married. The boys are in Europe. One is studying theater and working part-time in a restaurant in Seville. The other works for a Scottish bank in London.”