“These forged documents,” he said, gesturing at my ID on his desk.
“Not forged at all,” I told him. “Legitimate documents issued by your government. I have not used one of them in the commission of any crime.”
He sat back to think about me. “So,” he said, “as far as you’re concerned, you have done nothing criminal, and there’s no reason to arrest you.”
“Not in this country,” I said. “Not unless you decide you’re angry with me and rig something up. If Leon Kaplan finds out I’m alive, and if then I went back to the States, he might want to press charges against me as an accessory to Lola’s crime. But he’d never be able to extradite me from here on a charge like that; everybody’s got more important things to do.”
“So you could stay here and be safe, you believe.”
“Safe from Leon Kaplan,” I said. “I don’t know about being safe from you, or the cousins in Tapitepe, or all the curious people around who might figure out there’s something wrong with me.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “You’re right to worry about being safe from me, because now I know the one thing you don’t want generally known.”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re wondering what I’m going to do about it,” he said.
“I’m thinking of nothing else,” I assured him.
“I’m wondering that same thing myself,” he admitted. “On the one hand, it would be satisfying and a very good mark on my record if I were to uncover this... what is the word? Old-fashioned English word.”
“Dastardly,” I suggested.
“Yes, exactly! I knew you’d know it. Thank you.”
“De nada.”
“Were I to uncover this dastardly plot,” he said, and beamed at the sound of that, “it would be a great good mark for me, which by the way I could use. It might mean a reward for me from the insurance company.”
“Or not. I think they’re pretty miserly.”
“Possibly,” he said. “But the sad thing, of course, would be that, even if I couldn’t find a Guerreran crime to attach to you, and possibly I could, but even if I couldn’t, your lovely wife Lola would still go to jail.”
“I’d hate that,” I said.
“I’m sure she would too.”
“Absolutely.”
“Now,” he said. “What if I took a different course? What if I went along with this rather Jesuitical idea of yours that none of your sub-rosa activities have been actual crimes in terms of Guerreran law? What if I decided that it wasn’t up to me to discover an American criminal residing in America?”
“Lola, you mean.”
“Yes, exactly so. What if, further, I thought it would be of aid to the public peace and tranquillity if I were to take you under my wing until it is time for you — or Felicio Tobón, I mean, of course — to fly off to America? How long do you suppose that will be?”
“Lola should get the check by the middle of the week,” I told him, “this coming week. Then she’ll fly down, I’ll get my visa, and we’re out of here.”
“A week, then,” he said. “You would be under my protection for a week. Those oafs in Tapitepe would not bother you. No one in Guerrera would question you.”
“Would I go back to Casa Montana Mojoca?”
“No, no,” he said. “That’s not the best, not after you disappeared.”
“Too bad,” I said.
“You would stay with your in-laws in Sabanon,” he decided. “No one would wonder a thing, not if I decide to protect you.”
We looked at one another. He smiled slightly. He waited for me.
I said, “The check Lola is to get is supposed to be six hundred thousand dollars.”
“A fine amount of money,” he said. “And which I know to be the truth, because our friend Kaplan told me the same figure. How wise it is of you to be truthful with me.”
“I can see that,” I said. “Tell me, do you have any thoughts? Anything that might help you decide?”
“The term that floats in my mind,” he said, “is ten percent.”
Sixty thousand dollars. It could have been a lot worse. “That seems very decent,” I told him.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll tell Lola to bring it with her,” I offered.
“That would be best,” he agreed. “You understand, between us, it could not be a check. It would have to be cash.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Not siapas,” he said.
I couldn’t help laughing. “I’d love to see that much money in siapas,” I said.
“I’d like to see it in dollars,” he said.
46
We did not shake hands. It wasn’t that kind of deal. We simply smiled at one another, and stood, and the driver stood, and we went back down to the car.
I would now be under the protection of Rafael Rafez, which meant, of course, I would now be under the eye of Rafael Rafez, but that was all right. We were now useful to each other, so we were on an equal footing. It is true he was shaking me down, but not very badly, and in fact I would be getting something of value for my sixty thousand dollars. After three weeks of constant bobbing and weaving, constant trouble, constant worry, my final week in Guerrera would be calm and serene. I would be back in our bed in our room in Mamá and Papá’s house, waiting for Lola to join me. I could relax now, and so could Rafez, because he knew he would get his sixty thousand dollars. If he didn’t, he could easily block my departure from the country. And he could do it without having to open any ambiguous graves.
Once again, in the car, I sat next to the driver, with Rafez enjoying the expansive solitude of the backseat. Mostly, between Marona and San Cristobal, we talked about Casa Montana Mojoca, a place he knew only from brief daytime visits on duty and about which he was naturally curious. I answered his questions and tried to give him a sense of the place, but I’m not sure I succeeded. The American lifestyle can be observed more readily than it can be described.
At San Cristobal, we dropped Rafez off at police headquarters. “Enjoy the rest of your stay,” he said, as he got out of the car.
“Thank you, I will,” I said.
Now there was the final hundred miles to Sabanon. I stayed in the front seat, mostly because I was too weary to move, it having been a hectic night and it now being past four-thirty in the morning. The driver was not a garrulous type anyway, so as the lights of San Cristobal faded behind us I went to sleep, not waking up until he made the right turn onto our street in Sabanon, which caused me to fall over against him. He had to elbow me out of the way while steering around the turn, and it was the elbow in the ribs that woke me.
Dawn. I blinked at the familiar street. Some workers were already up and out, trudging barefoot to their jobs. The driver stopped in front of our fuchsia house, and I got out, as Madonna greeted me with a snurf. I would have forgotten the vinyl bag on the floor at my feet with everything I owned in it if I hadn’t tripped over it.
“Gracias,” I told the driver, who nodded at me with that flat look of his. I shut the car door and trudged up the outside stairs and into a living room full of empty beer bottles.
I thought I might be hungry, but I didn’t care. Home is Felicio, the prodigal son. Home and very very sleepy.
I went straight to bed.
47
The first question, of course, was how we were going to tell Lola to bring sixty thousand dollars in cash with her. Was her phone tapped? Was this one? I thought probably not, in both cases, but it’s always dangerous to assume you have privacy. We wouldn’t use e-mail for the same reason, even if we still had it. That is, Arturo was webbed up here in Guerrera, but at home on Long Island we’d lost our Internet access to insolvency months ago.