Miguel releases the lawyer, puts on his own mask, and taps on the door to let the cameraman in. Then he tells the cameraman, “You have fifteen minutes to finish up here.”
“Yes sir.”
“Remember, put the tape in the trash bin at 13th Street and Ninth Avenue at exactly nine p.m. and simply walk away.”
The cameraman nods.
Miguel and Guillermo leave quickly. When they are halfway down the stairs they take off their masks. Guillermo breaks into tears, convinced there’s no way to stop what’s been put into motion.
“You were amazing. That is all I can say. Simply amazing.”
“You think so?” Guillermo sniffles. He feels he has just hammered the final nail into his own coffin.
“You’re a true patriot, Guillermo. What a brave speech. You’ll be remembered for generations to come, you know that? You will appear in the history books—”
“I just need a drink.”
“Well, let’s get out of here and go to our usual spot.”
“What happens next?”
“A film editor will create a straight recording from the time you sat down at the table to the time you stopped talking. It won’t be edited in the least, should someone later claim that the video has been tampered with. The editor has been instructed to make fifteen copies of the DVD, which will be given to me. I’ll keep them under wraps until the second part of the plot — your death — can be put into motion.”
“My death?”
“Of course. But it will all be painless, as promised. The country will be plunged into mourning by your death. And at your burial, we will hand the press the copies of the DVD and see how long the president stays in power.”
“It sounds foolproof.” Even as Guillermo says this, he is wondering if there is any way to get out of this. Yet only Miguel can throw him a lifesaver.
“It is, my friend. It is foolproof.”
“And when am I supposed to die?”
“This Sunday morning.”
“What if I change my mind?”
Before they get into Miguel’s car, he hugs Guillermo tight and whispers, “You won’t.”
It’s obviously too late to retreat.
The fuel is there. It just needs a match.
chapter twenty-six. a bicycle built for two, maybe three
It is seven a.m. Sunday morning and Guillermo gets his Pinnarello mountain bike out of the back bedroom and parks it in the living room. He truly loves his bicycle now that Braulio has had it restored. It has twenty speeds and is made of the lightest of carbons, so that it can be lifted with one hand. It’s a model of engineering genius. Actually, it can be balanced on two fingers once it’s been hoisted up.
Guillermo goes out to the terrace of his apartment. The sun is shining. The flamboyant tree below is about to burst into bloom. Soon there will be orange flowers falling on the grass and into the central fountain, something he will not live to see. He stares off in the distance and sees the tranquil surface of polluted Lake Amatitlán. Beyond the water he sees a plume of smoke rising up from the Pacaya volcano against a blue sky. He is horrified by the thought of never again seeing the people and places that have accompanied him for nearly fifty years.
Guillermo opens the refrigerator and takes out a plate of frijoles volteados and tortillas wrapped in cloth. He puts them in the microwave for twenty seconds and then pours himself a glass of orange juice for the dead man’s last meal. Within the hour, the world will be spinning without him, though he imagines his face will be plastered across the front page of every website reporting Guatemalan news. He wonders if anyone at this very moment is even thinking of him. Perhaps Ilán or Andrea.
Who is going to call them to tell them their father has been killed?
Miguel has helped Guillermo devise a perfect plan, so that there will be no way to trace the killing back to him. Miguel called a cousin who had been affiliated with the Mano Blanco back in the eighties, when the guerrillas were threatening to destroy civic catholic society. The cousin has anonymous connections to three assassins: a cashiered sergeant whose brutality is known throughout the country and is now working with the Zetas of Mexico to bring Colombian cocaine to the US via landing fields in the Petén; an oreja who serves in the presidential guard and is a member of Opus Dei; and a glue-sniffing criminal who has been in and out of prison for years and is reputed to have murdered half a dozen people for a handful of quetzales.
Any of these criminals would be happy to execute a stranger, no questions asked, for the paltry sum of 2,400 quetzales. The killer will do the shooting and disappear.
Guillermo looks at the food on the table one last time and is unable to eat a thing. He had been drinking all night, still gathering the courage to go through with his suicide. He is beyond depression and yet keeps thinking about his kids and his desire to see them again. He is upset by the thought that they will be ushered through college by Rosa Esther’s uncle, or by a new rich Mexican boyfriend. Still, he has set something in motion — the video has been made, the murderer hired. Guillermo can already hear the outraged speeches that his cohorts will be making at his burial at the accusation that the president was the architect of his murder.
The mole-faced president is about to wake up to the biggest surprise of his shitty life, thinks Guillermo. He has no idea what is awaiting him. A downside to the suicide is that he will not get the chance to see the president’s face blanch, tick nervously, and tighten up like a ball of tissue when he is served the news that even the dead want him out of office. And the president will glance around to see the face of his wife, that sow who believes the world is fooled by her constant photo opportunities in which she hands over a thirty-dollar monthly payment to an Indian family to demonstrate the government’s generosity.
Maybe the president will be placed in the same prison as Byron Lima who oversaw the murder of Bishop Gerardi in 1998. Let’s see which of the two makes it out of jail first.
Guillermo is sure the manila folder he is leaving in his gym bag with Ibrahim Khalil’s documents will be a trove of incriminating evidence for independent investigators. He hopes Ibrahim’s discovery that Monsieur and Madame President were siphoning funds from Banurbano to place in secret accounts is sufficient evidence to have them both arrested.
* * *
Miguel Paredes’s brilliant plan is to have Guillermo at the designated assassination spot at eight a.m. A ten-minute ride from his building.
Guillermo is ready at seven thirty. He has a splitting headache — his body is rebelling against him. Dying, putting an end to it all, is obviously the only solution.
He goes down the hall to the bathroom overcome by excruciating pain, brought about by the nonstop ingestion of almost pure alcohol. Nothing comes out — it must be gas. He goes back to bed to lie down, just for a minute. He is tired, extremely tired. He doesn’t intend to sleep, but he does. When he wakes up it is ten to eight. He needs to hurry.
He races across the apartment, gets his bike, and takes the elevator down to the basement. As usual no one is in the elevator. The doors open and he walks his bike across the nearly empty garage and up the back ramp to the door, which leads to the garbage dumpster on the side of the building. From there he can take the alley, used only by the garbage trucks that come every Thursday, to the main road.
His route through the alley is the only way to avoid being seen. Actually, it doesn’t matter if Guillermo is seen or not, by either the lobby or parking attendant. Once the news of his death is announced, who cares who has seen what?