As suddenly as it had begun, the downpour stopped. Silence. And then dripping, like far-off whispers, a world of whispers.
“What in God’s name do you expect me to say to something like that?” he asked. Oddly, he wasn’t furious; he was simply at a loss for framing a response. Despite himself, he believed her. He believed the betrayal, and he believed the pledge of loyalty. It was the staggering simultaneity of them that confused him, and made her seem wildly unstable.
She let go of her knees, leaned away from him, and got off the bed. She stood a moment with her back to him, and then she sat down in the chair near the nightstand, her legs apart, her hands sunk into the skirt gathered between her thighs, the front of her dress still unbuttoned. She was looking toward the window, her profile powder blue in the wet light.
The city had vanished, and the universe was nothing but a dripping darkness as far as the mind could imagine.
Chapter 34
Sleep was impossible, so Mondragon had reverted to what was becoming a way of life for him-cruising the city’s streets in the dead hours of the night. As he stared through darkened windows, his thoughts often drifted into the familiar doldrums of self-pity, and at other times they were sucked into the superheated whirlwind of his loathing. Regardless, it all led to the same theme of his constant meditation: his hatred for Ghazi Baida. It was an ulcerated wound, one that was never allowed to heal.
He was halfway across the city when he got the call from Quito that they had picked up one of Domingo’s girls, and immediately he instructed his driver to head toward the colonias near Benito Juarez International. Then on the way, he got the second call about Estele de Leon Pheres, a name that gave him great hope the moment he heard it. He knew that name, and he knew the possibilities it implied.
Mondragon spritzed his head. He sipped straight scotch from a glass. Tonight, his raw skin was throbbing. Stress. That’s what it was. For some insane reason, stress made it worse.
The front of his head was on fire. He spritzed it again. He wanted to close his eyes and wait for the cooling effect of the analgesic. But he couldn’t. He sat there in the half-light of the sedan, his eyes goggling at everything, seeing, seeing, seeing, taking in everything. His eyeballs fanned around like searchlights that couldn’t be extinguished.
He took another shot of scotch. He was on the edge here. A few more sips and he wouldn’t be able to think straight. He would be in that zone, that strata of exquisite self-deception where he’d assume he was thinking straight, even though he wasn’t, like a pilot flying too high without oxygen, slipping into a nether zone of absolutely believable delusion. This was his fate since his face had been sloughed away-to endure by balance, to linger at the edge of delusion but not to step over, to be constantly tempted by relief but never able to taste deliverance.
Mondragon turned the front of his head to the window again. Just a slight shift in focus made the city rush away at warp speed, and then his own reflection was staring back at him: eyeballs and lips… a fucking horror show.
Then he picked up a wafer-thin translucent mask. Molded into the shape of a face, it was made of special materials that would fend off the infectious grit-laden smog of the city’s night air. He carefully placed it over his face, attaching it to the back of his head with two Velcro straps. He took a moment to adjust the gel and membrane inner surface of the mask to the front of his head, making it as comfortable as possible. He could wear it only a couple of hours before he would have to remove it. But it would give him a little time to maneuver outside his car.
He looked out the window of the car and thought of the people inside the buildings he was going by. He thought of the millions of people in the city. In the whole universe, only one life meant anything to him at all. The others were nothing. They were mere bits of debris, blown and whipped about in the eddies of history, spinning out their stupid and irrelevant hours and days in meaningless insignificance.
But not Ghazi Baida. Not his old friend. Not that one certain soul. He deserved a special place in the scheme of things.
He poured a bit of scotch into a glass and carefully sipped it through the mask. He had to keep the buzz going, especially while he was in the killing house. The buzz would help him focus his thoughts on the events of the coming hours.
He thought of the faces of the people who were about to die, and he thought of all the people who died every day-how many? tens of millions?-who no longer needed their face. God threw away a city of faces every day, so many faces assigned to fire and decay every day, wasted every day, that if you had them all in one place, you could shove them around with a bulldozer. You could push them into piles; you could build mountains with them. Every beggar and pustule on the globe had a face, and it was as nothing to him, no more important to him than his own ass, which he never saw. But he saw his face every day, and no one, no one, appreciated the significance of what he saw staring back at him from a mirror, or a bucket of water, or a puddle, or a window along the street.
Mondragon thought of the ubiquity of the human face, billions of them throughout the earth. A vast sea of faces. Mountains of faces pushed into the sea of faces, and every day they kept coming, gargantuan piles of faces, a face for every birth, a face for every death. Mondragon was haunted by the idea of dying without a face.
Chapter 35
They both heard a faint tickling at the door handle, but neither of them had a chance to react before the door was pushed open and two men stepped inside, automatic weapons ready, although not pointing at them. As Susana gathered the front of her dress and started buttoning it, one of the men raised his hand for them to be calm.
Mazen Sabella came through the door between the two men.
“My apologies for coming in this way. Sorry.”
He was holding a paper bag.
One of Sabella’s guards went into the bathroom and then came out again.
“I have some coffee,” Sabella said, holding the bag up to them. “And a few pastries.” He was wearing the same clothes he had worn when Bern met with him. They were a little more wrinkled now.
The same guard went to the armoire and opened it. Then he got down on his knees and checked under the bed.
“What’s going on?” Bern asked.
“You and I have to talk,” Sabella said. “You’ve done a very good job of cleaning yourselves. The street is clean.” He addressed Susana. “Your cell phone, please.”
She reached for her purse, retrieved the phone, and gave it to Sabella, who gave it to the second guard. The man left the room with it.
“You’ll get it back,” Sabella said. “We just don’t want to be overheard.” He looked around the room. “So we’ll talk here.” Then he spoke to Susana again. “But I’m afraid we’ll have to talk alone. My men will take you across the street for a bite to eat. We’ll be able to see you from the window.”
Silence.
“Now?” Susana asked.
“Yes, please.”
Giving Bern a level look that told him nothing, she stepped into her shoes as she picked up her purse, then left the room with the two men. Bern and Sabella were alone now.
Sabella walked around the bed and sat in the chair where Susana’s bag had been. He opened the sack and put one of the paper cups of coffee on the nightstand, then placed a hard pan dulce beside it. He took the other coffee for himself.
Bern came around the end of the bed, too, and glanced down at the street, where Susana was crossing Calle Pasado to the pasteleria. The lights inside the pasteleria gave it a cheerful glow. Susana went to the glass display
