I wanted to know.
In moments I was heading down the snowy drive, south toward my home (which had been hopefully put back together). I pushed the pace, mesmerized by the snow, and tried to decide what to do next. The thug Ramos had stolen some second-generation interview footage from me, but now I had a tape of something a lot more interesting.
When I pulled into my street, the time was just past eleven and I was thinking about calling Lou, or Steve, or both. But then I saw something odd. A woman was walking down the steps from the lobby of my building, a woman I recognized from somewhere.
Her hair was tangled and she was wearing black jeans and a black sweater. It took a second before I finally processed the fact it was Carly Grove. And she seemed frantic. I assumed she’d come in a cab, but she had my home phone number, so why would she come over if I didn't answer? New Yorkers don't just drop in. A social no-no.
Maybe the reason had something to do with how she looked. I felt like I was seeing a specter.
"Thank God you're here," she blurted out, striding up. She was actually shaking, and I could tell she'd been crying. Nothing like the gutsy woman I'd seen a few days earlier. "I kept getting your machine, but I thought maybe you were hiding."
I looked at her, and forgot all about my own issues. It was hard to remember ever seeing a human being in such distress, except for Sarah.
"Why would I be hiding?" I was taking out the Betacam bag and closing my car door, hoping to seem normal and professional.
"They called me about six o'clock tonight. Children of Light." She could barely get the words out. "They'd seen my interview with you. How did they get it?"
I looked down at the snowy—make that slushy—street and felt a chill go through me, followed immediately by anger. Ramos, that bastard.
"They . . . Somebody took a copy this morning." Stated like that, it sounded pretty lame. "I'm so sorry—"
"He threatened Kevin. He actually said if I signed a release to let you use the film, my child would 'meet with an accident.' And then he said something about you, that your own—"
"Who? Who called you? Did he tell you his—?"
"He wouldn't give a name. Just some man. He had a foreign accent." She threw her arms around me, and I hugged her back as best I could.
"Where's Kevin now?" I was so concerned about Carly that I'd repressed the information that he'd also mentioned me.
"Marcy was there, so I told her to take him with her. To her mother's place in the Bronx, where she lives." Carly was still trembling as she loosened her grip on me. "I called a car service to drive them up."
"Well, come on in. Let's talk." Truthfully, I wasn't sure how much I wanted to tell her about what I'd just seen at Quetzal Manor. It would probably just distress her more. Where had Kevin come from? Did I really want to de-legitimize him in her eyes?
As I led her through the lobby, hoping to appear composed, Patrick Mooney greeted us, announcing that his sister, Rosalyn, had been gone for an hour and that she appreciated my memorable tip.
The place looked like nothing had happened, and Carly immediately collapsed onto my "earth-tone" couch. I hadn't told her my apartment had been tossed along with the robbery and, thanks to Rosalyn, I didn't need to. In fact, it actually looked cleaner than it had in months. Maybe, I thought, I should reprioritize my life and hire her more often.
Then I got a glass of water for Carly and sat down next to her.
"I'm really sorry," I began, deeply meaning it. "If I'd known all this was going to happen, I'd never—"
"It's not your fault." She took a long drink. I hadn't bothered with ice, and I immediately felt I'd been inhospitable. Kind of a vagrant, minor concern, considering. Then she went on. "I guess I knew down deep I shouldn't have given you that interview. But I wanted the world to know about Kevin. Now, though . . . should I call the police or something?"
The short answer to that was yes, but my mind was already skipping on to a different topic.
"Carly, do you know where Kevin came from? Really came from? Did you ever actually try to find out?"
She sighed and took another sip.
"I told you I don't care. When they brought him, all pink and helpless, I just—"
"Who brought him?" I interrupted.
"Well, I'd been up there the day before, signing all the papers. I was supposed to go up that day, but then somebody called and said one of the girls who was staying in the clinic or whatever it is was bringing him to me. So don't come."
"You're saying one of the girls—?"
"Yeah." She looked wistful for a moment, as though remembering. "Then she just showed up, looked like some blond college dropout. I guess a little more fanfare would've been nice, but Marcy was there to help me and that was it. That's the last contact I ever had with Children of Light." She shuddered involuntarily. "Till now."
Well, I thought, the last thing I'm going to do is tell her about what I just saw. She's the ideal customer for Alex Goddard: She truly doesn't want to know details.
"Carly, there's not much I can do about what's already happened, but I can try to keep you from getting into any more trouble. Why don't you call them in the morning and tell them you've yelled at me and rescinded your permission for Applecore to use the film? And say I've promised I won't. You've threatened to sue me or something. That should get you off the hook."
"You really think so?" Her look brightened slightly.
"Yes, it's me they're worried about, not you. I represent some threat to them, because of the film I'm making. Just bail out and you'll be okay."
"Thanks. I did get the feeling that's all they really want." She took another drink of water. "But if they wanted to scare me, they're doing a hell of a good job."
"Well, then, why not take Kevin and go away for a couple of weeks? On a vacation someplace? And while you're doing that, I'm going to have a one-on-one with Alex Goddard. I've got a little leverage now."
She looked at me. "What . . . what are you going to do?"
I couldn't tell her about my videotape of his baby cache without explaining a lot more about Children of Light than I thought she wanted to hear.
"Don't you think the less you know the better?" I said, taking her hand. "I've caused you enough trouble already."
"No, I caused myself trouble." She was getting up. "Can I use your bathroom?"
"Sure." I pointed the way.
While she was gone, I went to the kitchen and surveyed it, checking the cabinets. Again, the place was cleaner than it had been in ages. The look of it momentarily bucked me up.
When Carly came back, she hugged me and then announced she wanted to go check on Kevin.
"I'll do what you said about calling them," she concluded, reaching for her bag. "I think you're right. That ought to get them off my case. At least for the moment. As for the long run—“
"Carly," I said, taking her hand again, "we'll get through this. Just trust me."
We hugged one more time and then she was gone. I took the moment to double-lock the door, and then collapsed on the couch. What should be my next move? I closed my eyes and tried to review all the insidious things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. The illegal drugs, the break-in and theft of my film, the suspicious nursery of Children of Light, the threats to Carly . . .
Then it finally came back that she'd mentioned Ramos saying something about me. By now I was getting used to being threatened by the man, so one more time was hardly news. But I wished I'd asked her the specifics.
That was when I roused myself and reached for the phone. The time was pushing eleven, but I still wanted to check in on Sarah, see how she was doing. Had she come back to reality after I left?
I was listening to the phone ring, my mind drifting to thoughts of how to gently ask Lou about her, when I realized nobody was picking up.
What's going on? I wondered, immediately coming alert. Mrs. Reilly had probably gone home for the day, but no way would Lou be in bed before midnight. He always had trouble settling into sleep.
Maybe, I then hoped, I'd just dialed the wrong number. But when I tried again, still no answer.
I clicked off the phone and felt a wave of concern. If Colonel Jose Alvino Ramos could find out I was making a movie, and then find out where I lived, he sure as hell could locate my extended family. Was that what he'd meant when he mentioned me to Carly?
I grabbed the set of Lou's keys I had stored in my bedroom's desk drawer and flew out the door.
The streets were plastered with a grimy veneer of city snow, melting fast, but I pushed the limits of safety and ran a couple of lights since the traffic was spotty. There was a parking space just across the street from Lou's building, and as I pulled in I looked over at his windows.
Through the curtains I could tell a dim light was on, probably coming from Sarah's bedroom. The front room, however, was dark.
My pulse was pounding as I raced up the steps to the street door. I thought about pushing his bell, but I didn't have the patience. Instead I just fumbled with the key set till I found the biggest one and shoved it into the lock.
The building had no lobby, just a row of stairs leading up to the next floor, with Lou's own door set off to the left. I shoved his Medeco key into the deadlock and pushed it open. The room was pitch-dark.
"Who . . ." said a startled voice, and I knew it was Lou, somewhere in the direction of the couch.
I clicked on the light switch and saw him lying on the floor, leaning against the couch, blood everywhere, his eyes in shock.
"My God! What happened?"
"I'm afraid to move. The phone was ringing and I figured it was you, but I didn't dare get up. Knowing you, you'd come over if I didn't answer." He was holding his side as he looked at me. "Morgy, she's gone."
At first what he said didn't sink in as I bent over him. The right side of his shirt, just above his belt, was soaked in blood. Taking care, I unbuttoned it and saw an open cut that looked as though he'd been stabbed with a knife. It also appeared to be reasonably superficial, as though a thin blade had pierced through a couple of layers of tread on his ample spare tire. But it was bleeding still, enough to make it look worse than it probably was. However, if it'd happened to me, I'd doubtless be in shock too.
I got up, went to the bathroom, and pulled two towels off the rack, then doused water over one and came back.
"Don't move. I'm going to pull your shirt away and try to clean you up, see how bad it is."
He just groaned and stared at the ceiling.
As I was swabbing his side, what he'd said finally registered.
"Did you say . . . Sarah!"
I dropped the towels and ran into the bedroom.
It was empty, the bed rumpled and beige sheets on the floor.
"No." I turned and feeling a hit of nausea, hurried back to his side. "What happened? Did—?"
"Fat Hispanic guy. Spic bastard. He had a couple of young punks with him. Mrs. Reilly had just left and I went to the door, thinking it was probably you ringing my bell. He flashed a knife and they shoved their way in. Then one of his thugs went into the bedroom and carried her out. When I tried to stop them, the SOB knifed me. I guess I . . . swooned cause the next thing I remember is waking up here on the floor."
It sounded garbled and probably didn't occur as quickly
as he thought. But I knew immediately what had happened Ramos—of course that's who it was—had come to take Sarah. It was his one sure way to stop me from mentioning Children of Light in my film. She was a hostage. My first instinct was to kill him.
"What else can you remember?" I was already dialing 911. Time to get an ambulance. And after that, the cops.
After about ten rings I got somebody and, following an explanation that was longer than it needed to be, a woman with a southern accent told me the medics would be there in fifteen minutes. I took another look at Lou and ordered them to hurry, then hung up. I was going to call the police next, but first I needed to hear exactly what had happened before he got quarantined in some emergency room.
His eyes were glazing over again, as shock and blood loss started to catch up with him. Clearly he would pull through, but right now, sitting there in a pool of blood, he could have been at death's door.
"Look . . . at that." He was pointing, his rationality beginning to fail. For a second I didn't realize what he meant, but then I saw a fax lying beside the phone. I picked it up. The time on it was 9:08 P.M. and it was from somebody named John Williams. Then I remembered. Wasn't that the FBI computer whiz he'd talked about the other day at the hospital, after we'd deconstructed Sarah's waterlogged passport?
There was no message, just a sheet with a date—two years old—and a list of names accompanied by numbers and a capital letter. Then I noticed the letterhead of Aviateca, the Guatemalan national airline, and it dawned on me I was looking at a flight manifest.
I scanned down the page, and then I saw it.
Sarah Crenshaw, 3B.
Williams found her, I thought. And she was traveling First Class.
What caught my eye next was the name of the person sitting in 3A, the seat right next to hers. A. Godford. Probably a computer misprint. Or maybe it was the name he used when he traveled. So if it was him, which it surely was, the bastard didn't even try to hide it.
I just stood there, thinking. Maybe you get one big-time coincidence in life, and if so, this must be mine. Sarah and I had both found Alex Goddard. Or he'd found us. Other women came and went through Quetzal Manor, but we were different. She'd escaped from him, half dead but now he'd sent Ramos to bring her back. It was the one way he could be sure to keep me under his control. But again, why? Was it just to stop my film, or was there more to the story?
"Morgy," Lou groaned "that son of a bitch took her tonight. I just know it."
That was my conclusion precisely, though I hadn't been planning to say it to him, at least not yet.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Something they said. I didn't quite catch it, but it sounded like, 'He wants you back.' Then some word. It sounded like 'Babylon' or something."
I stared at him a second trying to remember where I'd heard that before. Then it clicked in. That was the last thing Sarah had said she'd whispered that word when I was putting her to bed. What could she have been talking about?
He wheezed and I went back to him and pressed the towel against his side. The bleeding was about stemmed but he was definitely due for a hospital stay. A siren was sounding down the street. Probably the ambulance. Thank God I thought. Now it's time to call the police.
Then I noticed he was crying. What was that about?
"Morgy, they didn't actually kidnap her. You see, she—"
"What?" I guess I was trying to take it in. "What do you mean?"
"Know what she said? Sarah?" He choked for a second, then continued. "She said, 'Yes, I want to go back.' "
Before I could ask him what the hell he was talking about, the medics were ringing the doorbell. They strode in with a gurney, also rolling a portable plasma IV, young guys who looked like they'd be more at home at a Garden hockey game, followed immediately by two uniformed policemen, actually policewomen, one short and heavy, with reddish hair, the other a wiry young Hispanic. (I found out that ambulances called out for stabbing or gunshot wounds automatically get a cop escort.) In less than three minutes, Lou was in the blue-and-white ambulance and on his way to St. Vincent's emergency room.
I rode in the backseat of the squad car as we followed them and tried to explain what little I knew of what had happened. It turned out to be an education in the mindless sticking points of the law.
Long story short: The fact that I hadn't reported the burglary of my apartment that very same day immediately cast doubt on my seriousness as a truth-seeking citizen; I had no proof the unreported burglary of my apartment (if, indeed, such had actually occurred) was by some Guatemalan military attache named Jose Alvino Ramos; since Lou had never seen Colonel Ramos before tonight, he couldn't possibly identify him as that burglar either; accusing diplomats of a crime without ironclad proof was frowned on downtown; and when I stupidly repeated what Lou had said about Sarah's last words (well, he was going to tell them sooner or later, it would just come bubbling out at some point), the whole case that she was kidnapped went into revision mode.
By the time we got to the hospital, I was getting questions that seemed to imply that maybe it was all a domestic affair—like most of their calls: some spaced-out chick who’d run away once and got brought back and then, still unstable and crazy, decided to knife her own dad and disappear again. Now he was understandably covering for her. Happened more than you’d think.
I kept stressing that Lou was former FBI and not the sort to invent such a whopper, but this was listened to in skeptical silence. If it was a kidnapping, they then wondered aloud what was the motive and where were the demands of the perpetrators? I was ready to start yelling at them by the time we parked in the Seventh Avenue driveway of the emergency room at St. Vincent's.
They next made me cool my heels in the waiting room while they went back to interrogate Lou. They were with him for almost an hour, then came back to where I was and asked me to read and sign the report they'd written.
A troubled girl, who had emerged from a coma and apparently was suffering bouts of non-rationality, had disappeared and her father had been stabbed but not seriously. He was the only witness to the incident and claimed she'd been kidnapped. However, the girl had run away once previously, and there was no physical evidence she'd been taken against her will; in fact, her father admitted she had declared just the opposite. The whole incident would be investigated further after he came downtown and made a complete statement.
"I'm not going to sign this." I handed it back, fuming.
"Is there anything here that's not factually correct?" The
Hispanic cop was looking me straight in the eye, her expression cold as Alaska.
The question made me seethe. Sarah was probably already on her way out of the country, and here I was trying to reason with two women who practically thought she was the criminal. But I knew a lost cause when I saw one.
"Forget about it. I want to see Lou."
An intern was coming out and I snagged him, announced I was next of kin to a patient, and demanded to be taken through the official door and into the back. At that moment, the stout cop's radio crackled. They were being summoned to a Christopher Street gay bar where somebody had just been knifed in a back room. She looked at me, as though to say, "This sounds like a real crime," and then they hurried out for their squad car. Christ!
The intern, a young black guy, led me past a row of gurneys and into a private room at the rear of the huge space. Lou was bandaged all around his chest and hooked up to an IV and a monitor. He looked better, but I wasn't sure he'd be ready for what I was about to tell him.
"Hey, how're you feeling?" I asked as I walked in, trying to seem upbeat.
"Fucking cops." He was boiling, his face actually red. "Where do they get them these days? McDonald's rejects?"
"Easy, don't get your blood pressure up." I reached over and touched his brow. It felt like he had a mild temperature. "Let's all just calm down and try to think rationally."
"Yeah, I'm thinking rationally. You saw that fax I got from Williams."
"You think that was Alex Goddard seated next to her, right?"
"Who else? When she was in her moonbeam phase, she must have heard about him and gone up there and ended up in his clutches. But why did she let him take her down to—?"
"He told me he has a clinic in Central America. He called it 'a place of miracles.' And then Colonel Ramos shows up, part of the Guatemalan diplomatic corps. Put two and two together. That's got to be where they're taking her."
"Who knows, but I'm going to get the boys downtown to put out a missing-persons APB nationwide. Gerry'll do it for me if I ask. Fuck New York's Finest. They ain't gonna do crap anyway."
I listened wondering how to impress my bright idea upon him. The chances were Ramos was taking Sarah back to Guatemala. Probably right this minute. For some kind of unfinished business. Or just to hold her there as an insurance policy that Children of Light would never be mentioned in my picture.
"I seriously doubt a missing-persons alert is going to do any good Lou, because I seriously doubt she's going to be walking the streets of this country. That bastard Ramos is taking her where he knows he can hide her."
"You mean . . . Jesus." He stared at me as though the idea had never crossed his mind. I think he'd just repressed it. "What are we going to—?"
"The only thing we can do. I'm going down there. I'm going to go straight down there and locate Alex Goddard."
"That's an exceptionally lousy thought process." His voice seemed to be coming from a great distance.
"Why? Give me one good reason why. You think the police down there are going to bring charges against a colonel?" I really could have used some encouragement. "It's the only way—"
"Morgan, you've always been high-strung." He sighed and then winced. "Ever since you were a kid. I worried about you then and I'm worried about you now. I don't want you to go down there and get into trouble. Because believe me, that's a seriously wrong place to get crossways with the pricks who make the rules. You don't know your way around that Third World craphole. Wouldn't be that hard to end up a statistic. We can alert the embassy. Have them start looking for her."
"Listen, there's a lot more going on between Alex Goddard and me than you know." This was definitely not the time to tell him about the babies, or about Carly and the threats. "Trust me. I'm going down there. In the morning, if I can. Who knows? Sarah and Ramos might even be on the same plane."
As I was finishing that pronouncement, two nurses came in rolling a gurney and announced that his room was ready. Then they gave him a sedative.
Was I being irrational? The thing was, though, what would you do? I was absolutely sure Ramos had taken her. So it was obvious that was where he would go next. He was a "diplomat," apparently, so he could easily fudge the passport formalities.
As the nurses were helping Lou onto the gurney, I stood there holding his hand and thinking about what lay ahead. Steve was in Belize and maybe not even reachable, but I decided to start by giving him a call the minute I got home.
Then a middle-aged WASP, with dark hair, slightly balding, strode in the room. The photo ID on his chest read "Dr. M. Summers."
"So, how's the patient?" he enquired cheerily, ignoring me as he immediately began checking the chart at the foot of Lou's bed.
"Felt better," Lou said, not being taken in by his pro forma cheer.
"Well, we're going to make sure you get a good night's rest." Dr. Summers finished with the chart and started taking his pulse. "What's left of it."
"How long am I going to be in here, Doc?" Lou asked, flinching as the nurses removed the IV stuck in his arm.
"A couple of days. For observation. To make sure there're no complications." He smiled again. "You're a lucky man, Mr. . . . Crenshaw. Just a superficial cut. But we don't want you out playing handball for a few days." He turned and gave me a conspiratorial wink, then glanced back. "Okay, up we go."
"Can I come with him?" I asked, not optimistic but hoping.
The doctor looked genuinely contrite. "I'm really sorry, but he's going to be fine and visiting hours are long past. You can call in the morning. And you can come up anytime after two P.M. tomorrow. Let's let him get some rest now."
I walked around and took Lou's hand, hot and fevered, feeling so agitated.
"Don't think about anything tonight, okay? Worrying won't help. Just get some sleep. I'm going to find her, I promise you."
"Don't—" He mumbled some words, but I think the sedative the nurses had given him was seriously starting to kick
"Look, you can call down to 26 Federal Plaza tomorrow. See what they can do. In the meantime, let me follow my nose."
He tried to answer, but he was too far gone. I then watched wistfully as he disappeared down the sterile alley of beds.
After I stopped by the desk and helped them fill out the insurance forms, I caught a cab downtown to retrieve my Toyota. The time was now two-fifteen in the morning, but I still had plenty to do. When I got home, the first thing I did after I walked in the door was grab a phone book and call American Airlines. They had a flight, in the morning at nine-thirty. I gave them my credit card specifics and made a reservation.
I no longer thought that Alex Goddard's Children of Light and its Guatemalan accomplices were merely doing something shady. My hunch now was that it was completely illegal. They were getting hundreds of white babies in some way that couldn't bear the light of day, and they were prepared to do whatever it took to prevent me from highlighting them in my film. And with the Army involved, and now Sarah taken, their game was beginning to feel more and more like kidnapping. They certainly knew how.
Sarah had become a pawn, and all because of me. I almost wondered if I'd been unconsciously led to him by her, though that was impossible. Whatever had happened, the remorse I now felt was overpowering. It was, in fact, an intensified version of the guilt that had dogged me for the past fifteen years, the horrible feeling I'd somehow let her down, not done enough for her. I could have flown back for her high school graduation, but I was cramming for grad school finals and didn't take the time. Things like that, which, looking back, seemed terribly selfish. And now I'd brought this on her. God.
Okay, I thought, glancing at the clock, time to start making it up to her. Screw up your courage and wake Steve.
The problem was, Lou had been right about one thing. It'd been years since I'd been to Guatemala, and I wasn't sure I knew beans about how things operated down there these days. I was high on motivation and only so-so in the area of modus operandi. I needed Steve's help in plying the tricky waters of that part of the planet. He was busy, but this was definitely "us against the world" time, so maybe he could drive over to Guatemala City and help.
I picked up the phone again and punched in the number of his hotel in Belize City, which seemed to be embedded permanently in my brain. That wonderful accent at the desk mon, and then they were ringing his room. I had no reason on earth to assume he would be there, but . . .
The click, the voice, it was him.
"Sorry to call so late, love. You said you missed me, so I've decided to find out if it's true. Your coming attraction is about to arrive."
I guess I was trying to keep it flip. After our talk that morning, I wasn't entirely sure where we stood anymore.
"Who . . . Morgy, is that you? God it's two . . . Are you okay?" Then he started coming around, processing what I said. "You're coming . . . Honey, that's great."
As I noted before, he always knew how to give a good reading, sound sincere, no matter what the occasion.
"Actually, I've just made a plane reservation, and I'm going to be in Guatemala City tomorrow, just after noon." I hesitated then thought, why beat around the bush? "Care to meet me there?"
"That's terrific," he declared coming fully awake. "But why don't you just come to Belize City? Can't you get flight? It's actually not nearly as wild here as the travel books—"
"Well, I've . . . Look, I'd rather not talk about this on the phone. But do you think you could get free and drive over I really could use your help. I've got a situation."
"Well . . ." He paused. "I could be there by late tomorrow assuming my rented Jeep still operates after last week and the roads haven't totally disintegrated. Where're you going to be staying?"
"I don't know. Got any suggestions? I want to keep out of the limelight."
"Then try the Camino Real. It's like a Holiday Inn with plastic palm trees. Definitely low maintenance and low profile. Hang on, I'll get you the number."
Which he did, though I could hear him stumbling around the room in the dark. Then he continued.
"But listen, here's the bad news. I've got to be back here day after tomorrow. I just got a special permit to do some night shooting in the jaguar preserve down by Victoria Peak—you remember the rain forest I told you about?—but it's only good for one night, and I hear rumors there's an off-season hurricane forming in the Caribbean, which means I've got to stick to schedule. After that, though, I'm free again."
"We'll work it out." I was thrilled he would just drop everything and come. Maybe we were over the rough spot about the baby.
He didn't bring that up and I didn't either. Instead we killed a few minutes, and then I let him go back to sleep. I wanted to say I love you, but I didn't want to push my luck.
After that I called the hotel he'd recommended. The exchange was more Spanish than English, but they had a room. Apparently lots of rooms.
Next I rang Paula Marks, even though it was terribly late. She must have had the phones off, but I left a message telling her to be careful, with a postscript that I'd explain everything later. Just stick close to home.
Finally I called David's voice mail up at Applecore. I told him I had a personal crisis and was going to Guatemala City. I'd try to be back by the end of the week, hell or high water, but no guarantees. And if he touched so much as a frame of my work print while I was gone, I'd personally strangle him.
I don't remember much of what happened next. I basically went on autopilot. It's as though I dropped into a trance, totally focused. I packed my passport, a good business suit, the tailored blue one, and also a set of mix-and-match separates, easy to roll and cram in. Finally a couple of pairs of good (clean) jeans, a few toiletries, and then, thinking ahead, I also threw in my yellow plastic flashlight. I almost always over pack, but not this time.
Oh, and one other thing. For airplane reading I grabbed a Lonely Planet guide to Central America that Steve had left behind—I guess he figured he was at the stage of life to start writing them, not reading them—that turned out to be very helpful, particularly the map of Guatemala City and the northern Peten rain forest. I then collapsed and—images of Sarah's emaciated face haunting my consciousness—caught a couple of hours' sleep.
The next thing I knew, it was 9:20 A.M. and I was settling into window seat 29F on American Airlines Flight 377—next to a two-hundred-pound executive busy ripping articles out of the business section of El Diario—headed for Guatemala City.
For once in my life, I took my time getting off an airplane. But the instant I felt that first burst of humid tropical air against my face, like a gush from a sauna, I found myself wondering what Sarah had felt the moment her feet first touched the ground of Guatemala. In fact, I'd decided to try to think like her, to better understand why she might want to come back. Truthfully I didn't have a clue.
But first things first. Not knowing whether I was being stalked by Ramos or his proxies, I decided the idea was to see and not be seen—which actually was easier than I'd expected, at least during the initial pell-mell stages. Turned out the self-centeredness of Homo sapiens blossoms under those circumstances. Ignore thy neighbor, goes the credo. I just buried myself in the crush.
When I got to "Inmigracion," I labored through the "formalities" (as all countries love to call the suspicious looks you get from their airport bureaucrats) along with all the other gringo passengers on AA Flight 377, paranoid I might be arrested on the spot for some spurious reason. The purpose of my visit, I declared, was tourism. Just a nod at my passport and a stamp, which looked exactly like the one in Sarah's. I stared at it and felt a renewed sense of purpose. In fact, the photo in my passport looked more than a little like her. Maybe, I thought, I'm getting carried away with the identity issue, but there it was.
As I emerged through the wide glass doors of the arrival area, which fronted out onto the steps leading down to the parking lots and the humidity, I spotted a black Land Rover with tinted windows right in front. Uh-oh. That was, Steve once told me, a vehicle much favored by the notorious Guatemalan G-2 military secret police, who had retired the cup for murderous human-rights abuses over the past two decades.
Then two middle-aged men with Latin mustaches and nondescript brown shirts began getting out through the door on the far side. They next walked around to the terminal side of the car and glanced up the steps in my direction, as though looking for somebody. It was a quick survey, after which they turned back and nodded to the vehicle before it sped away.
What's that about? Am I imagining things already?
By the time I reached the bottom of the steps, I was being besieged by clamoring cabbies, so it was difficult to keep an eye on the two men, who were now walking off to the side of the main commotion, toward a shady grove of palms at the end of the arrival drive, lighting cigarettes.
Get out of here. Whether you're fantasizing or not, the thing to do is grab an unsuspecting cab and get going.
I strolled toward the other end of the long row of concrete steps till I reached an area where cabs were parked, more drivers lurking in wait. They all looked the same way most cabbies in Third World lands look: shabby clothes, with beat-up cars, an expression in their eyes somewhere between aggression and desperation.
Just pick one whose car looks like it might actually make it to downtown.
I spotted a dark blue Chevy that seemed clean and well maintained, its driver young and full of male hormones as he beckoned me to his vehicle, all the while undressing me with his eyes. Yep, he was definitely my guy.
I ambled by his car, acting as though I was ignoring the innuendos of his pitch. Then I bolted for the back door, opened it myself since he was too startled to help, threw in my carry-ons, piled in behind them, and yelled, "Let's go. Rapido."
As we sped away, I realized his greatest surprise was that I hadn't raised the subject of price. At that point, it was the last thing on my mind. I looked back to see the two guys from the black Land Rover, together with two others, heading for a car that had been double-parked right in front.
Had I been right after all?
We made a high-speed turn onto the highway, and I immediately ordered the driver to take a service road that led off toward a cluster of gas stations and parking lots with falling-down barbed-wire fences. I figured I had about half a minute of lead time, whatever was going on.
We dodged massive potholes and the loose gravel flew, but then we reached a ramshackle gas station and I ordered him to pull in. Then I watched the line of traffic speeding by on the main highway for several minutes. Nobody pulled off. Good.
My driver finally got around to asking where I wanted to go, and as calmly as I could, I told him.
"The Palacio Nacional."
"Si."
With that he gunned his engine and spun out. Jesus!
"Mas despacio, por favor."
"Okay," he said, showing off his English as he donned his sunglasses. "I go more slow. No problem."
The initial destination was part of my new plan, hatched while I was on the plane. When I was reading my guidebook and filling out my entry card I'd had a bright idea. I knew exactly how I wanted to begin.
Heading into town, the time now the middle of the afternoon, I leaned back in the seat and tried to absorb the view, to get a feeling for where I was. We first traveled through the suburban fringes, the heavily guarded luxurious mansions of the landholding and military elite, the one percent of Guatemala who own ninety-nine percent of the country. Iron fences and wide expanses of lawn, protected by Uzi-toting security, guarded whimsical architectural conceits topped by silver satellite dishes. A twenty-foot wall shielded their delicate eyes from the city's largest shanty-town, makeshift hovels of bamboo and rusted tin, with no signs of water or drains or toilets. Guatemala City: as Steve had put it once, a million doomed citizens, the rich and the poor, trapped together side by side in the most "modern" capital in Central America.
Why on earth had Sarah decided to come here? Even if she did travel with the mesmerizing Alex Goddard it was hard to imagine a place less spiritual. Couldn't she feel that this was all wrong? One of us had to be missing something major.
Fifteen minutes later I was passing through the fetid atmosphere of downtown, which seemed to be another world, Guatemala City's twin soul. It was an urban hodgepodge of Burger King, McDonald's, discount electronics emporia, an eye-numbing profusion of plastic signs, filthy parking lots, rattletrap buses and taxis, stalled traffic. Exhaust fumes thickened the air, and everywhere you looked teenage "guards" in uniforms loitered in front of stores and banks with sawed-off shotguns, boys so green and scared-looking you'd think twice about letting one of them park your car. But there they were, weapons at the ready, nervously monitoring passersby. Who were they defending all the wealth from? The ragged street children, with swollen bellies and skin disease, vending single cigarettes from open packs? Or the hordes of widows and orphans, beneficiaries of the Army's Mayan "pacification" program, who now begged for centavos or plaintively hawked half-rotten fruit from the safety of the shadows?