whether you could go. He would have said something to me.”
“So, what do you conclude?”
Darkness had fallen quickly and we now looked at each other in the flat light of a single bulb behind us on her stoop, shadows playing as moths flitted around the light.
“Come in,” she said.
I picked up the tray and followed her in the dark through a small, ordered living room and kitchen with books - among them a creased, battered 1994 edition of Malcolm X Speaks edited by George Breitman - and a laptop computer arranged around the counter, into her room. She turned a light on, pointed to the bed for me to sit down, and reached up high on a bookshelf full of english translations of Latin American literature- Garcia Marquez, Galeano, Allende, Restrepo, Taibo – and pulled down a map.
She sat next to me – very close, again – and unfolded the map on our laps. “We are here,” she said, pointing to San Cristobal. “We are going here,” she said, pointing east and north, to Hatuey, near Palenque. “Where you need to be, to find what you are looking for, is all the way down here.” She pointed to a city called Tapachula at the southeast corner, on the Guatemalan border.
“The murders you're investigating are not about the rebellion. They're about drugs.”
Lucky guess , I told myself. She still has nothing . “Why do you think I'm investigating –?”
“-- And as a journalist,” she said, “you need to smarten up.”
I exhaled. So it had all been lucky guesses and speculation.
“Come with me to Tapachula, after Hatuey. You could learn things you need to know, and I could use the muscle,” she said, touching my arm.
“Tell me more about how I need to smarten up,” I said.
She got up by pushing down on my knee, folded up the map and pointed out to the living room with her head. “Over dinner,” she said.
I'd survived the interrogation and now Evelyn wanted to talk, with all the energy of an expert who has finally found an interested audience. Over salad, she told me that Tapachula was the axis of the Mexican drug trade. Over rice and beans, that it was where cocaine came from Central America through Mexico and on to North America and Europe, and how she thought that Public Security officers and paramilitaries were involved in the trade, which sometimes got violent. And over the pound cake I'd brought, how she was writing a series of stories about it that would involve going there and talking to people, including some dangerous people, which was why she wanted me. Forget investigation, I could get into discount bodyguarding.
But I knew she had several male friends, including one who was quite capable indeed.
“You can't take anyone from around here?”
“No one can that can go with me right now...”
So, whatever Walter was doing, he was busy.
“Let's see how it goes in Hatuey,” I said.
It was a brisk and cold walk home. A pack of the stray, skinny dogs of San Cristobal tried to chase me, barking, as I passed the cathedral. I barked back at them. They walked away.
Evelyn had impressed me. She was knowledgeable, capable, experienced, and knew people on this side of the conflict, people I needed to know. It would be a pleasure to work with her, even if spending that much time in close quarters with a clever pretty girl would make me hurt for Maria more than usual and already had. She also had some natural talent for police work – guessing right that I was a death investigator, even though she had guessed wrong, thinking I was a journalist.
As for my own guesses: I guessed that Walter and her knew each other very well, that he trusted her a great deal, that he had spent nights at her place, was last there just a few days ago, and was planning to come back.
Chapter 5
The book had given it away. When I started reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X , Shawn had ranted about how Alex Haley filtered Malcolm's words, how if I really wanted to know Malcolm, I needed to read
“So, what do you conclude?”
Darkness had fallen quickly and we now looked at each other in the flat light of a single bulb behind us on her stoop, shadows playing as moths flitted around the light.
“Come in,” she said.
I picked up the tray and followed her in the dark through a small, ordered living room and kitchen with books - among them a creased, battered 1994 edition of Malcolm X Speaks edited by George Breitman - and a laptop computer arranged around the counter, into her room. She turned a light on, pointed to the bed for me to sit down, and reached up high on a bookshelf full of english translations of Latin American literature- Garcia Marquez, Galeano, Allende, Restrepo, Taibo – and pulled down a map.
She sat next to me – very close, again – and unfolded the map on our laps. “We are here,” she said, pointing to San Cristobal. “We are going here,” she said, pointing east and north, to Hatuey, near Palenque. “Where you need to be, to find what you are looking for, is all the way down here.” She pointed to a city called Tapachula at the southeast corner, on the Guatemalan border.
“The murders you're investigating are not about the rebellion. They're about drugs.”
Lucky guess , I told myself. She still has nothing . “Why do you think I'm investigating –?”
“-- And as a journalist,” she said, “you need to smarten up.”
I exhaled. So it had all been lucky guesses and speculation.
“Come with me to Tapachula, after Hatuey. You could learn things you need to know, and I could use the muscle,” she said, touching my arm.
“Tell me more about how I need to smarten up,” I said.
She got up by pushing down on my knee, folded up the map and pointed out to the living room with her head. “Over dinner,” she said.
I'd survived the interrogation and now Evelyn wanted to talk, with all the energy of an expert who has finally found an interested audience. Over salad, she told me that Tapachula was the axis of the Mexican drug trade. Over rice and beans, that it was where cocaine came from Central America through Mexico and on to North America and Europe, and how she thought that Public Security officers and paramilitaries were involved in the trade, which sometimes got violent. And over the pound cake I'd brought, how she was writing a series of stories about it that would involve going there and talking to people, including some dangerous people, which was why she wanted me. Forget investigation, I could get into discount bodyguarding.
But I knew she had several male friends, including one who was quite capable indeed.
“You can't take anyone from around here?”
“No one can that can go with me right now...”
So, whatever Walter was doing, he was busy.
“Let's see how it goes in Hatuey,” I said.
It was a brisk and cold walk home. A pack of the stray, skinny dogs of San Cristobal tried to chase me, barking, as I passed the cathedral. I barked back at them. They walked away.
Evelyn had impressed me. She was knowledgeable, capable, experienced, and knew people on this side of the conflict, people I needed to know. It would be a pleasure to work with her, even if spending that much time in close quarters with a clever pretty girl would make me hurt for Maria more than usual and already had. She also had some natural talent for police work – guessing right that I was a death investigator, even though she had guessed wrong, thinking I was a journalist.
As for my own guesses: I guessed that Walter and her knew each other very well, that he trusted her a great deal, that he had spent nights at her place, was last there just a few days ago, and was planning to come back.
Chapter 5
The book had given it away. When I started reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X , Shawn had ranted about how Alex Haley filtered Malcolm's words, how if I really wanted to know Malcolm, I needed to read
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