The next thing he knew, Waxman was greeting a visitor at the door.
She was a small, thin woman with broad dark features. An Indian, Abatangelo guessed. She appeared to be in her twenties, though a certain hardness about the eyes made her seem much older. She wore a work shirt, flannel jacket, white Keds; her black hair hung straight to her elbows. There was a sadness about her, but a certain ferocity as well. Whatever sorrow she’d endured had been racked into clarity.
She clutched an accordion folder to her chest. Declining introductions, Waxman led her into his own room and closed the door behind them. Waxman’s voice, the woman’s voice, thrummed urgently back and forth beyond the door for about a quarter hour, then the muted voices stopped, Waxman’s door opened again. The woman visitor returned to the entry, studying Frank now with an expression of profound disgust.
As she stood there, Abatangelo noticed something he’d failed to see before. A hatchwork of whitish scars mottled her throat. Her shirt collar, buttoned to the top, partially concealed them.
She removed her stare from Frank’s body long enough to meet Abatangelo’s eye. She did not smile or offer any greeting, and Abatangelo decided against saying anything himself. Her spirit seemed inured to courtesies. Waxman broke the spell finally, guiding her by the arm out the door and thanking her.
The woman gone, Waxman joined Abatangelo in the dining room. Without waiting for a question, he started in quietly with, “Her name is Aleris. Missionaries christened her that. She’s Kekchí, an Indian from northern Guatemala. Two years ago she came to San Francisco to work with the refugees here. I met her while I was working on an article. She’s quite a story in and of herself.”
His eyes betrayed a gravity Abatangelo had not seen before. “Tell me later,” he said.
“Of course,” Waxman replied. “In any event, Aleris brought something. I think you should see it.”
“Bring it to me here. I want to keep an eye on our boy.”
Waxman went to his room, returning with the accordion folder Aleris had left behind. He set it down on the table, then closed the sliding doors connecting the dining area to the living room, leaving just enough space so Frank could be seen. The folder contained news clippings, press releases, human rights reports, written in various languages and worn smooth by repeated handling. Typewritten translations had been stapled to each of the foreign pieces, some in Spanish, some in English.
“This,” Waxman said, withdrawing an article and pointing to the accompanying photograph, “is Rolando Moreira. The man who owns the hotel Frank told us about.”
Abatangelo leaned closer. The man wore white and addressed a crowd of schoolchildren in a tropical courtyard.
“Moreira,” Waxman continued, “is a hacendado who runs a glass factory in Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border. He also owns a great deal of ranch land in that area, all along the Rio Suchiate, which is to Chiapas what the Rio Grande is to Texas. Immigrants cross it by the thousands daily.”
Abatangelo said, “The point, Wax. We’ve got a drive to make.”
“I understand. Indulge me just this moment. Basically, Moreira positions touts in the border village of Hidalgo, across the river from Tecún Umán. He offers work on his ranches or transport north to America. The touts charge outrageous fees and kick back to Moreira. Sometimes they just drop the pretense, take their pigeons out into the forest and rob them. Rape them.”
“Let me guess,” Abatangelo said. “You just snuck in Aleris’s story.”
Frank groaned on the sofa and pulled the blankets tighter over his head. Waxman regarded him a bit differently now, as though he were a rare and poisonous flower.
“Here,” he said, finding a second clipping and photograph, “is the person Frank referred to as El Zopilote.”
The grainy picture, a decade older than Moreira’s, presented a man with lean features and thick black hair, descending the steps of a small white courthouse.
“His real name is Victor Facio,” Waxman explained. “He’s the overlord of Rolando Moreira’s security apparatus. I don’t know how much you know about recent Mexican history.”
“No history lessons,” Abatangelo said.
“The short version, then.”
“Tell me in the car.”
“I don’t think it would be wise,” Waxman said, “to share some of this information with him present.” He nodded toward the sofa.
Abatangelo sighed. “Go on, wrap it up.”
“After 1972 or so, rumors put Facio everywhere and anywhere there’s money and guns and a smack of anticommunism in the air. There’s only one file in the public record here in the States, though. It’s in U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas.” Waxman pointed again to the article Abatangelo was holding, the one with the picture of Facio standing before a courthouse. “It was for trafficking- weapons, primarily, the drug charges were quashed. Facio served twenty-three months in Huntsville, was released, and then vanished underground again.”
Waxman’s tone was almost reverential. There was a newfound purpose about him. Abatangelo found this troubling.
“Wax,” he said. “It’s gonna be dark soon.”
“I’m almost finished,” Waxman insisted. “Come the 1990’s, Facio apparently saw the wisdom of plying his trade in the private sector. The Iron Curtain fell; Castro was isolated. During a return visit to Mexico City he paid calls on several patrones he’d hit up for funds over the years. There were a lot of executive kidnappings then, it was a very tense time. Facio interviewed with Rolando Moreira in the Colonia Roma. Curiously, at the same time as his interview, a prominent financier who’d been abducted a month before was found alive, wandering along the Paseo de la Reforma. There’s always been talk that Facio was somehow involved in the man’s release, and he used it as a calling card. Regardless, he became Moreira’s director of security.”
Abatangelo thought about this for a moment. “What you’re saying is, he plays both sides.”
“The rumor,” Waxman said, “is that Facio is responsible for putting Rolando Moreira together with a major trafficker from Sinaloa. A man named Marco Carasco.”
“A rumor,” Abatangelo said. “This article, the one about the kidnapping, it appeared…?”
“In one of the opposition newspapers from Guerrero.”
“Aha,” Abatangelo said. “What’s that, a Mexican rad rag?”
Waxman bristled. “You put Facio in the picture with Moreira and Marco Carasco, you have the prospects for everything we heard from our friend there on the couch. Stolen goods? Trafficking, kidnapping, murder? I don’t find it a stretch. Not now. I’ll be honest, at first I hadn’t the least faith he would say anything worthwhile, or even coherent. But these people are real. If he knows half what he claims to know, he is a very valuable man.”
Abatangelo eyed Waxman with mild dismay. In a cautioning tone, he said, “You were at the table with me, Wax. You got to watch him work. It was like he was tooling through his mind on roller skates. And it’s not much of a mind.”
“I believe he’s telling the truth.”
“There’s no future in the truth, Wax, not on that plane. Let’s not save the world today, all right? Think small, walk tall.”
Waxman reddened. “We have to get corroboration. Of course. I don’t mean to imply otherwise.”
Abatangelo shook his head. “No time.”
“I intend to make time,” Waxman responded. “I also intend to treat our friend with a little more respect. It’s time we stopped assuming the only way to get him to cooperate is to scare him. You’ll probably laugh if I say we might appeal to his conscience.”
Abatangelo laughed.
“He could use a friend.”
“I’m friendly,” Abatangelo said.
“Aleris is willing to track down other witnesses- ”