‘No.’
‘The Yankees, then?’
Mingolla nodded.
‘They are good, too,’ said Chapo with some condescension. ‘But I think the Mets are a little better.’
Mingolla stared grimly at the TV.
‘You are interested in this show?’
‘Right.’
‘I’m so sorry. I will watch with you.’
Corson had begun an interview with a crewcut kid younger than Mingolla, who was wearing an Air Cav patch on a nylon flight jacket. ‘Would you like to say anything to your parents… or your friends?’ Corson asked him.
The kid wetted his lips, looked at the ground. ‘Naw, not really.’
‘Why not?’
‘What’s there to say?’ The kid gestured at the soldiers, the jungle terrain. ‘Picture’s worth a thousand words, right?’ He turned back to Corson. ‘If they don’t know what’s goin’ on, me tellin’ ’em ain’t gonna help.’
‘And what do you think is going on?’
‘With the war? Fuckin’ war’s bullshit, man. This place’d be all right, wasn’t for the war.’
‘You like Guatemala, then?’
‘I dunno if I like it… it’s weird, y’know. Kinda neat.
’What’s neat about it?’
‘Well…’ The kid studied on it. This one time, I hitched a ride to Reunion with these minitank guys… they were convoying oil trucks along the Peten Highway. So one of the trucks turns over in the middle of the jungle, oil spills all over the fuckin’ place. Nothin’ can move till the spill’s cleared up. And alla sudden out of the weeds comes all these Fritos, man. They got little stoves and shit. They start cookin’ food. Fritters and chicken and stuff. Selling pop and beer. Like they been knowin’ this is gonna happen and they was just waitin’ for us to show. And there was girls, too. They’d take ya into the weeds and do ya. They wasn’t hard like the city girls. Sweet, y’know. It was ’bout the best time I had down here, and it was weird the way they was waitin’.’
‘You served in Guatemala, no?’ Chapo asked.
This time Mingolla was glad for the interruption; the interview had made him feel that he was watching a depressing home movie.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Artillery.’
‘It must have been horrible,’ said Chapo, and made a doleful face.
‘Wasn’t great.’
Chapo nodded, apparently at a loss for words. ‘Perhaps we can be friends,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you will come to visit me in my room. I live on the third floor.’
Startled, Mingolla said, ‘Maybe… I don’t know. I’m pretty busy.’
‘I would like it very much.’
‘We’ll see.’
On the screen, the kid was talking about his duty. These choppers, man, they are fuckin’ fast. You come in off the sea, you’re so far out you can’t see land, and then the land pops up, green mountains, cities, whatever, like one of those pop-up birthday cards. And then you’re into the clouds. I’m talkin’ ’bout hittin’ at the guerrillas, now. Up in the mountains. So you’re in the clouds, and when you unbutton your rockets, all you see is this pretty glow way down under the clouds. Like glowing marble, that’s what it looks like. And the only way you can tell you done anything is that when you make a second pass, all those little hot targets on the thermal imager ain’t there anymore. You don’t feel nothin’. I mean… you do feel somethin’, but it’s different.’
That was enough for Mingolla, who still felt the deaths he’d caused. He got up, and Chapo, too, stood.
‘I hope I will see you again,’ Chapo said. ‘We can talk more about New York City.’
Stupid blocky brown face. Earnest smile. Common clay of the Master Race. Chapo’s ingenuousness—similar to that Mingolla had encountered in dozens of young Latin men—had sucked in him. Maybe it was for real, but Chapo was no less his enemy for all that.
‘Not a fucking chance,’ said Mingolla, and walked out into the lobby.
Marina’s bedroom was a touch more luxurious than those of the Casa Gamboa. Carpeted with a patchy shag rug. Wallpaper of a waterstained oriental design that might have been plum blossoms, but had worn away into a calligraphy of indefinite lines, with pale rectangles where pictures had once been hung. The bed was draped in a peach-colored satin spread that rippled in the light from a lamp on the night table. Seven Sotomayors, including Ruy, were seated on the bed and floor, and Marina, enthroned in an easy chair, led the discussion… less a discussion than a bout of fabulous confessions. Mingolla stood by the door, watching, listening. He had been disconcerted by Ruy’s presence, but he was now considering changing his tactics and confronting Ruy with the notebook rather than sandbagging him.
‘It was in April of the year,’ said one of the Sotomayors, a man named Aurelio, slightly older than yet strikingly similar to Ruy in appearance. ‘All that month I’d been feeling at loose ends. Even though I was involved in settling the Peruvian problem, my involvement wasn’t enough to prevent idle thoughts, and my thoughts came to settle on Daria Ruiz de Madradona, the daughter of my father’s murderer. She was also involved in the Peruvian operation, but that was not a factor in my decision.’
As Aurelio described the process of plotting that had led to his abduction of Daria, he maintained a downcast expression as if he were revealing a matter of great shame; yet his tone grew exuberant, his description eloquent, and the others, though they sat quietly and attentive, seemed titillated, leaning forward, breathing rapidly. Especially Marina. She had on gray slacks and a silver-and-gray blouse imprinted with a design of black birds flying between stylized slants of rain. Crimson lipstick gave her mouth a predatory sexuality, and her cheekbones looked as if they were about to pierce her skin. With each of Aurelio’s revelations, she appeared to sharpen, to become more intent and alive.
‘I don’t think,’ said Aurelio, ‘I’ve ever known myself as I did in that moment. My location in the world, in the moment. Certainly my senses had never been so clear. I took in every detail of the walls. The grain, the knotholes and wormtrails. All in an instant. I could hear the separate actions of the wind in the trees outside, and how it was flapping a piece of tarpaper on the roof. Daria was not a beautiful woman, yet she seemed unbelievably sensual. Fear drained from her face as she met my eyes, and I couldn’t hate her any longer, because I knew that this moment was more than mere vengeance. It was drama. Ritual and destiny coming together. And knowing this, knowing that she knew, there arose a kind of love between us… love such as arises between a victim and the one who is both torturer and bringer of mercy.’
After Aurelio had finished, the group analyzed his story, dissected it in terms of its bearing upon Sotomayor psychology, all with an eye toward repressing their baser instincts; yet their dissection had the prim fraudulence of sinners who were justifying their wickedness and pretending to be sad. Other stories were told, and Mingolla— seeing in their gleeful descriptions, their delight over their violent traditions, and their penitent pose a perfect setting for his presentation—bided his time.
After an hour of this, Marina asked if he had any questions, and stepping to the center of the room, he said, ‘Sure do. They might annoy you, but I hope you’ll answer them.’
‘We’ll do our best,’ she said.
‘From what I’ve heard tonight,’ he said, ‘and what I’ve heard before, it seems that a good many of your operations have been undermined by someone suddenly reestablishing the feud. And this usually happens at the last minute, right when success is at hand. Is that fair to say?’
One of the men started to object, but Marina interrupted, saying, ‘It’s not unfair.’
‘What makes you think that won’t happen here?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to prevent,’ said Ruy haughtily.
‘Right.’ Mingolla beamed at him, surprised to feel some fondness for him now that he had him in his grasp. ‘Anyway, there’s a casualness to your operations that makes me nervous.’
‘What are you leading up to?’ Marina asked.
He ignored the question. ‘Everybody except you has admitted to some sin. Don’t you have anything to confess?’
‘Marina is our exemplar,’ said Ruy with a measure of bitterness. ‘She’s blameless in all this.’
A smile carved a little red wound in the gaunt planes of her face. ‘Thank you, Ruy.’
