“After each trip, Jude sat down at the computer and typed out a detailed account of the meetings.”
“I want to read them.”
“You have to read them,” she said. “Everything’s on the CDs-operation reports, Baida’s dossier, information on the Triple Border area, pictures and brief bios of everybody significant. There are also some drawings that Jude made of Mazen Sabella. The whole thing was put together for you. It’s a lot to read, and the sooner you do it, the better.”
She slid her other leg up and rested her elbows on her upright knees as she pushed her fingers into her hair again. It was an interesting habitual gesture, a physical reflection of a psychological state. She looked as if she were pushing herself, as if she had drained her energy right to the bottom and every hour that went by was costing her double.
She sat that way in silence for a few moments, and then she sighed and looked up at him.
“I just can’t do this any longer. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
Without another word, she rolled off the other side of the bed, went to a wardrobe against the wall, and took out a gown. Then she headed to the bathroom and closed the door.
Bern got a chair from the studio and took it over to the windows that looked out onto Avenida Mexico and the park. He sat down with the laptop and began scrolling through the index of CDs. Night air moved tentatively through the window.
When Susana came out of the bathroom, she was wearing a simple chocolate brown silk gown. Her hair was combed out, and when she came around the end of the bed, he could see that she had washed her face.
“Let me show you how to lock up,” she said.
They went downstairs, where she showed him how to set the locks. He turned out the lights and followed her upstairs, watching her hips, seeing now and then the cleavage of her buttocks beneath the swaying nightgown.
He turned out the bedroom lights as they came through the door.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “The way I feel, I could sleep inside a lightbulb.”
“I don’t need it for the laptop,” he said.
He returned to the chair and the city glow coming in through the windows. Susana sat in the near dark on the edge of the bed, just a few feet away. He tried to concentrate on the screen, but he was aware that she was sitting there looking at him. After a few moments, she asked, “What did they do… to make you do this?”
He wasn’t sure he should tell her. He seemed to have been dropped into a world where the shapes of your friends and enemies could change even as you looked at them, where one could easily become the other, depending upon a criteria that was completely outside his understanding.
But he found himself in desperate need of a friend right now, and the tone of her voice alone seemed genuine and inviting, and he wanted to believe, as she had said he should, that he could trust her.
He closed the laptop to get the cold glare out of his face, and the shadows closed around them. He could just make out her figure on the edge of the bed, her back straight, her hands in her lap, unthreatening, almost absent of bravery.
He told her about the conversations with Mondragon and then with Mitchell Cooper. He told her of Mondragon’s proposal, of his refusal to be any part of it, and then of Mondragon’s extortion. He went on and told her of Alice and her family, of Tess’s death and Alice’s disability, and of their close relationship. He told her that he would do just about anything not to destroy his connection with that family.
When he was through, she said nothing. He waited for her to speak, to ask another question, to commiserate in some way, however perfunctorily, but she said not a word. He felt the air move through the window and pass over him.
“Tomorrow, you need to start wearing Jude’s clothes,” she said.
Jesus. He hadn’t fully appreciated how strange this was going to be. He imagined it would be like looking at himself in a mirror with his reflection out of focus, two overlapping selves.
She was studying him. “You sit the same way he did,” she said. “Exactly. It’s very strange. You cross your legs the way he did. Your hands look like his, too, and you use them the way he did.” She was speaking softly, almost meditatively. “And the way you use your voice. And show impatience.”
He could see her on the bed, her figure a little lighter than darkness.
“The way you look at me,” she went on, “my face first, absorbing it completely. You tend to look at my mouth more than my eyes when I talk. He did that.”
She suddenly stopped, as if catching herself.
“Sleep here,” she said. “I don’t want to wake up and not know where you are.”
She was quiet a moment, and he felt that he should say something, but nothing seemed quite right to him. And then the moment passed, and she stood. He could only barely see her, and at moments he wasn’t sure he could see her at all. He heard her turn back the covers, and then the barely audible rustle of her gown coming off slipped through the darkness to him like a fugitive memory. The sounds of her body moving between the covers made him ache with memories of Tess.
He opened the laptop again and made himself concentrate on the screen. It wasn’t hard, because he began with Jude’s biography file. The information was riveting, and he read until his eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sandpaper. Susana was breathing the heavy sleep of exhaustion as he returned the CD to its hiding place and plugged in the laptop to recharge.
He went back to the windows and looked down into the black trees of the park. He recalled the nude drawings that Jude had made of her. He hadn’t slept next to a woman since Tess’s death, and even though Tess had been dead for almost a year now, he couldn’t shake the odd feeling of guilt simply at the thought of crawling into bed with Susana. But it was going to be good just having her there beside him, sharing the silence and the darkness… the way it used to be.
He lost track of time by the windows. He heard sounds in the park across the narrow street. Once, he thought he heard footsteps on the sidewalk underneath the trees over there. Hours passed, it seemed-he deliberately didn’t look at his watch-before he was too tired to stand there any longer. He went around to the other side of the bed, pulled off his clothes, laid them over a chair, and carefully crawled under the covers.
His hand was on the cell phone after the second ring, but he was still asleep when he picked it up.
“Yeah.”
“Judas,” the voice said. “It’s Mingo.”
But before Bern could respond, someone grabbed the cell phone. Foggy-headed, he struggled to open his eyes. The room was highlighted in a blue dusk. Confused, he couldn’t move.
“ Si, ” he heard a woman say.
She was on one elbow, leaning against him. “?Quien es este? ” Pause as she listened. “ No, se enfermo. ” Pause. “?Quien es este? ” Pause as she listened. “ Dos o tres dias. ” Pause to listen. “ Si. Si. Bueno. ”
She stayed on her elbow and punched off the phone. He could see her profile against the light from the window.
“Did he say anything to you?” she asked.
Bern was awake now. The guy had said something…
“It’s… I think he said, ‘It’s Mingo.’”
“Mingo?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he… that was it.”
“Mingo,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She was quiet, looking at him, though her face was in shadow, the light coming in from behind her.
“Don’t answer the phone,” she whispered hoarsely.
She kept the phone and put it on the table on her side of the bed. She lay down again.
He turned on his side to look at her. She was lying on her back, the sheet folded down to her rib cage, the surface of her bare breasts dusted in a pale powder blue light. She was staring into the darkness above her, and he could see a glint in the moisture that glazed her eyes.
They lay that way for a long time, and her eyes were still open when he lost consciousness.
