Miguel is smiling. “Thank you, but I was educated at the University of Life.”
Guillermo laughs, but presses on: “So you clearly have a set of favored transactions.”
“Yes, and the best transactions also help me accumulate knowledge.”
“What can knowledge bring you? More money?”
“I knew you would ask me that. Each bit of information is like a piece in a puzzle. When you first look at it, it’s unique but indistinct. Sure, it is colored and shaped, but initially you have no idea how it will fit together with another piece of information. But if you turn it around, looking at it close up and then from a distance, you will know exactly where to put it. In time, all the pieces will fit together, and you will have a very clear picture of things. And that can become extremely profitable.”
“It’s that easy?” Guillermo wants to be cordial, but he isn’t buying Miguel’s metaphor.
“My friend,” Miguel says, taking a sip from his tea, “in my line of business, as in yours, knowledge is a valuable commodity. When that knowledge or information becomes actionable, it gives you lots of power. Let me give you an example. Did you know that there are several video cameras at the front of Ibrahim Khalil’s office and factory?”
“I’ve seen the one at the entrance to the building,” Guillermo says indifferently.
“I am not talking about that one. I mean the ones attached to the guardhouse, which captured the events outside the textile factory on the day of the murders.”
Guillermo is now swirling the ice of his second drink in his mouth. “What could they possibly show? Maryam’s car arriving and waiting? Ibrahim walking through the gate and getting into the car? The Mercedes driving away? The murder took place six blocks away.”
“So many questions, but I venture to say that the tape shows a lot more.” Miguel pauses. “But you have to want it.”
Guillermo runs a hand through his sparse hair. “In that case, I believe the police might be interested in seeing it. Personally, yes, I would like to get hold of it. Maybe I can see Maryam alive for one last time.”
“I already have the tape in my possession.”
“How did you—”
“Guillermo, in my line of business the question is never how or why something is done, but what it shows and how you can use it.”
“So what are you getting at?”
“It is a very interesting tape. Extremely interesting. It is what I would call a piece of actionable information. Would you like to see it?”
“Of course.”
“Then let’s go,” Paredes says, taking a huge bite of the champurrada and standing up.
“Right now?”
“You have your car?”
“Parked at the lot on 13th Street. Near the post office.”
Miguel waves at the waiter to bring him the bill.
“Meet me at my store in twenty minutes. The Fontabella garage entrance is on 12th Street between Third and Fourth avenues.”
“Can’t I give you a ride?” Guillermo is drunk enough that a little company in the car might help steady his driving.
Miguel shakes his head. “My chauffeur is downstairs waiting for me.”
“How did he know where we were going?”
“I never go anywhere without my driver. See you there,” says Miguel, changing his mind about waiting for the bill. Instead, he simply puts three hundred quetzales on the table.
* * *
Guillermo wobbles over to his car at the 13th Street lot and drives down to Tenth Avenue, where he turns toward the Zona Viva. The traffic is dense, all first- and second-gear driving, until he reaches Villa Olimpica and Mateos Flores National Stadium where he’s finally able to get into third gear. He guns the accelerator and races down the ravine next to the stadium, not letting up until he reaches the blue polytechnic school, the Justo Rufino Barrios statue, and the old Casa Crema on Reforma Boulevard. He loves all these landmarks, still standing, on some level belying the fact that Guatemala City has devolved over the years into chaos.
He turns left on 12th Street in Zone 10 and drives past the Mercure Casa Veranda Hotel, where he once spent a weekend cavorting with Araceli. The parking lot entrance to the Fontabella Mall is a few blocks north. He turns in, drives slowly down the ramp, and finds a parking spot next to a post, which he grazes, lightly scraping the fender of his car. Given his state of inebriation, the dent is small potatoes.
On the way to the elevator, he passes a blue Hyundai and jumps. He remembers seeing one the first time he met Maryam at the Centro Vasco. There must be hundreds of them in Guatemala. But still, why here?
He looks inside the Hyundai, but it’s empty.
Guillermo stumbles into the elevator that will bring him to the mall lobby. From the lobby he takes the escalator to the second floor. Raoul’s is down the corridor from the Sophos Bookstore, as Miguel indicated, in a hidden corner. The display windows show only the finest of clothes, tastefully arranged on lifelike mannequins. The store could be on Coral Gables’ Miracle Mile or even on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. But now it’s totally empty except for the one salesman sitting on a stool facing out from the display counter. He absentmindedly files his nails.
As soon as Guillermo walks in, a bell sounds. The salesman looks up, but doesn’t move. Miguel comes out of a door in back, by the dressing rooms, and signals for Guillermo to join him in his office.
To his surprise, Paredes’s office is all computer screens and file cabinets — no trace of the ledgers or cloth swatches that befit a haberdashery. Instead, it resembles the headquarters, the huge central brain, of an extensive informational spy network. Clearly Raoul’s is a front for some other kind of business.
“Take a seat here,” Miguel gestures to a gray swivel chair facing a huge Mac computer screen.
As soon as Guillermo sits down, Miguel moves the cursor over to a still open video window and clicks play. “Watch now,” he says.
The black-and-white film is very grainy, but despite his drunkenness, Guillermo recognizes the driveway leading up to the guardhouse and the parking lot of Ibrahim’s textile factory. There’s a light-colored car near the top of the screen, which is not moving. There’s no way to read the license plate from this distance. For four or five seconds everything seems frozen, then a man steps out of the parked car and looks down toward the guardhouse through binoculars, though the distance is less than twenty feet. He gets back into the car, and about two minutes later does the same thing, only this time he appears startled and quickly gets back into his car.
Miguel is leaning over Guillermo. “That man’s a lookout. Watch the next part very carefully.”
Guillermo glances up at him, not understanding.
“No, no, don’t take your eyes off the screen!”
Guillermo lowers his eyes back down just in time to see a black Mercedes come into view. He feels a pain in his chest as he recognizes Maryam’s car, and his eyes well up. The car’s moving very slowly, much more slowly than Maryam would normally drive, even in a blurry video. Whenever she picks up her father, she turns the car around by the chain-link fence so she can drive away as soon as he comes down. This time, the car stops about ten feet from the factory and office door, which will force her father to walk over gravel to her. Five seconds later, a man steps into the camera’s view and moves slowly toward the car.
“That’s Ibrahim!” Guillermo shouts incredulously, as if the man was still alive.
“What’s surprising about that?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just strange to see him alive like this, walking toward the car, toward my Maryam.” Guillermo realizes what he has confessed, but he’s beyond censoring his words.