“She seems like a smart girl.”
“Woman, Teru. We try to call them women now.”
“Not when you’re my age, and they’re her age.”
We walked on.
I said, “It’s time to look into Arturo Toledo’s financial situation. See if he really did get out of Guatemala with all those millions.”
“Hard to find that out, I would imagine.”
“Probably. But Doña Elena’s new husband is a congressman, so his finances are in the public record.”
Teru said, “If Toledo had the money, and the Delarosa woman only got two hundred thousand of it, then Doña Elena might have all the rest.”
“And if she does, there might be hints of it in the congressman’s finances.”
“Which would mean what, exactly?”
I paused a moment to consider the implications. “If Toledo didn’t have the money, I’ll know why Delarosa settled for two hundred. And if he did have the money, I’ll know I need to focus more on why she settled.”
Teru nodded. “You want help looking into that?”
“Nah. It’ll give me something to do while I wait for my head to get back to normal.”
“Define ‘normal.’”
“Shut up.”
“Okey-dokey.”
With his usual sixth sense, Simon seemed to know we were coming. He stood waiting in the shade of the palms beside the guesthouse patio, looking very proper in his Savile Row bespoke suit. It was a relief to settle into a chair at the table beside him. On it were a pitcher of lemonade, three glasses, three slices of key-lime pie, and a SIG Sauer P228 in a tactical holster.
Simon remained standing as he poured the lemonade with one hand held behind his back. “I thought you might enjoy a citrus-flavored dessert after your Mexican meal. To cleanse the palate.”
I decided not to bother asking how he knew where we had eaten and refused to dignify his remark about palate cleansing with a reply.
I said, “Where’s the Tabasco sauce?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You know. Tabasco. Hot sauce, made from peppers.”
“I am familiar with the condiment, but should not consider it desirable with key-lime pie.”
“Oh well,” I said, helping myself to a slice. “One should not expect an English butler to be familiar with American cuisine. Have a seat and pitch in on this pie before it melts.”
Looking back and forth between Teru and me, Simon slowly sank into the chair on my left. Teru was already sitting across the table. He also took a slice of pie and dug in.
I pointed at the M11 on the table. “Is this for me?”
Simon said, “To replace the one they took.”
“How’d you get your hands on it so quickly?”
“Respectfully, Mr. Cutter, it would be best if I did not answer.”
“But it’s legal? Registered?”
“Indeed it is.”
“That takes at least ten days.”
“In most cases, I believe that is correct.”
“But not in this case?”
“No, sir.”
“This is what you did after you left the hospital?” I clipped the holster to my belt. “Thank you, Simon.”
“You’re welcome, Malcolm.”
I looked at him to see if his use of my first name was intentional, or a slip. He looked away and covered a yawn with a linen napkin.
I said, “When did you last sleep?”
“I believe it was the evening before last.”
“You didn’t even take a nap?”
He looked back at me as if I had just suggested serving fish and chips to the Prince of Wales. “One does not nap.”
I turned to Teru. “And you. Thank you for staying there all night.”
“Sure,” said Teru, finishing his pie. He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Simon, that was excellent. I’m really gonna miss your excellent taste in bakeries.”
“And I shall miss the pleasure of walking in your garden, Mr. Fujimoto.”
I said, “You guys never mentioned how you found me.”
Teru said, “You told me where you were going, remember? When you didn’t get back on time, we decided to go looking.”
“I said I’d be back about three. What time was it when you found me?”
“I don’t know. Couple of hours after midnight.”
“You searched all that time?”
Neither of them answered.
I decided I had asked enough questions for a while. We sat there quietly while seagulls wheeled and shrieked in the perfect blue above. Teru packed his pipe and lit it with a wooden kitchen match. Neither of them seemed to be in a hurry to move on. Neither of them seemed to think anybody had to say anything. We just sat together.
26
I spent two days recuperating at El Nido. Most of that time I slept, drank Scotch, and tried not to think about Haley or the real reason I had been so easily taken by the two guys in the mountains. To distract myself I went over to the mansion and wandered through the rooms. It was about as close as I could get to Haley.
I stood in her closet and touched her clothes. I tried to smell the scent of her on them, but it had faded with the months gone by. I looked through the random assortment of odds and ends she had left on top of a built-in dresser. A little sewing kit for replacing buttons and so forth while traveling. A nail file. A valet parking stub. Paperclips all linked together in a chain. Coins. Costume jewelry. Handwritten notes on scraps of paper, random things like “coffee for the boat” and “Ben at 8:00” and “tell Lizzie pale blue.”
I wandered through some guest rooms, the solarium, and her screening room, which looked just like a little motion picture theater. I ended up in Haley’s office, sitting at her desk. Simon had not yet given me the key to the lap drawer, which was locked. I didn’t care enough about its contents to ask him for the key. Everything would be going to the Salvation Army soon anyway.
I opened the other drawers one at a time. There was just what you’d expect to see in a businesswoman’s desk. Files, basic office supplies, a small tape recorder for giving dictation. There was no tape in the recorder. Maybe that was for the best. I would have listened to it. I would not have been able to resist. But hearing Haley’s voice might have sent me screaming back to the mental ward.
The stack of screenplays were still there on the corner of her desktop. She once told me her office got about five a day. One of her assistants spent most of the time screening them for Haley. Only the best made it to her desk. I looked through the stack idly.
The third one down had the word “Guatemala” on the cover. I opened it. A one page treatment had been slipped between the pages. I looked it over. It was closely based on what I had told Haley about my first deployment to Guatemala. American missionaries in a remote mountain village had been caught up in the struggle between the Communists, the military, and a local drug lord. People had died, some of them heroically. It had always bothered me that nobody knew what happened in that village. It had bothered Haley, too, after I told her the story, which was why she wanted to make a film about it.
I skimmed the script. Some of it was too close to the facts. If Haley had filmed it the way it was written, she might have gotten me in trouble with the Marine Corps or the US Department of State. I got to the last page, and there at the bottom was a note in Haley’s handwriting: Get Malcolm’s okay.
I traced the cursive writing with my finger. What a woman.
Leaning back, I stared off across the room at nothing in particular. The shelves of books and walls of polished paneling faded as I wondered if it could be coincidental, or if Haley’s Guatemalan film really did have something to do with the URNG case. I went over everything I could remember. None of the details surrounding the murder of the American missionaries had surfaced in the URNG case. The kidnapping and murder of Doña Elena and Toledo had happened long after the missionary murders, and long before Haley and I met. Except for the setting in Guatemala and the fact that the URNG and the junta were both involved in the story that inspired the film, there didn’t seem to be any overlap at all. But at least the question had distracted me a while.