appear on the scene who could not be bought, he could be killed. This was apparently not the case here in America. Also, Hurtado was persisting in his belief that a rival Colombian gang was behind this business, using Ibanez as a tool and Indians as soldiers. El Silencio thought this was unlikely, and he knew more about Indians than Hurtado did, being a quarter Indian himself. He’d heard stories from his grandmother about what some of those up-country Indians could do, and while he was not a particularly superstitious man, the carnage in the garage had given him pause. El Silencio had presided at a number of mutilations and he knew for a fact that the two gunmen had not been slashed by a human being. Nor was Prudencio Martinez a superstitious man. He was (had been) the most efficient crew boss the Hurtados had owned, and ifhe had pulled the plug, then what they faced was not just a bunch of Indians.
El Silencio walked down the dim hallway, which stank of chlorine from the pool and frying from the coffee shop, and went into a room. Here were his available troops, six men, all of whom looked up from the card game, the TV, the magazine, when he came in. He didn’t know them well, for he was not a crew boss himself and uneasy with command. He almost always worked alone, besides which he would have to leave one person behind to watch over Hurtado. This was even more disturbing.
They were all staring at him. Someone muted the television, which drew El Silencio’s attention: someone who could act independently, a little more alert than the others? Or he just didn’t care for what was on? The guy was named…something Ochoa, a veteran of the paramilitaries that the big latifundistas used for protection against the Marxists, a solid shaven-headed man with a scar under his eye. El Silencio gestured to him.Delegate, that was one of Hurtado’s favorite words. Delegate and hold accountable. El Silencio had never had a problem with the latter of these, and now he was going to learn about the former. He took Ochoa to his own room for an interview.
While Paz is becoming a god, Geli Vargos is hiding out in Rupert Zenger’s house. The woman had arrived late one night with only the clothes on her back, having fled her grandfather’s house in the disturbances following the arrest of Hurtado’s men. Cooksey was kind, gave her a drink, questioned her gently.
“Was Hurtado himself arrested?”
“No, he was never there except once. My grandfather was terrified of him. But he mainly stayed at some hotel. There was this other guy carrying whatever orders he had…even the thugs were scared of him, but the cops got him, too. Then I heard they got sprung, and that’s when I left. I feel like such a coward! What do you think they’ll do to my grandfather?”
“Nothing, I imagine,” said Cooksey. “He’s covering for them, and they need him intact for the Puxto operation to go forward. I expect that they are not the primary threat to Mr. Ibanez. If he doesn’t stop cutting down that rain forest, I’m afraid…I mean what happened to his partners could well happen to him.”
When Geli understood what he meant she burst into hysterical sobs. Cooksey held her and stroked her back absently. In irregular warfare, he had been taught, there was a time to stir things up and a time to lie low and wait. This was the waiting time.
Paz returned home on the evening of the Sunday, eight days after he’d left. His mother drove him home.
“You’ll be all right,” she said when they pulled up to the curb. “You have my prayers and the prayers of everyone in the ile. Keep on the path of the saints.” They embraced, clumsily, as one does in the front seat of a car, and also because embracing had not been much practiced between them. Paz watched his mother drive off. He was carrying his bow and arrows and his model jailhouse, and for a moment he felt like a kid being dropped off to play at a friend’s house, holding toys, and the thought made him laugh out loud.
There was laughter coming from his house as well, from the patio in the back, and Paz went around the side of the house to join in the fun. Lola was apparently entertaining. Paz stepped into the patio and everyone stared at him as at a ghost. Amelia was the first one to respond. With a shrill “Dadeeeee!” she propelled herself at him and swarmed up him like a monkey. Paz had to put his emblems down on a chair so that he could hug her, which he did until she objected. He put her down and surveyed the party: Lola, Bob Zwick, Beth Morgensen, and an older balding man with a pleasantly ugly face whom Paz recognized as Kemmelman, Lola’s boss at the hospital.
Conversation sprang up again; everyone wanted to know all about what had happened. Paz ignored this, leaned over Lola, and kissed her.
“How easily I’m replaced,” he whispered. “And a Jewish doctor, too.”
“I won’t dignify that with a response,” she whispered back, but the dynamics of the group had changed. Kemmelman seemed to become uncomfortable, and shortly he stood and said he had to get home. When he’d gone, Zwick said, “So, give. Paz. Are you all holy now?”
“I am, as a matter of fact.”
“Yeah? Do something holy. What are these objects?” He picked up the bow and twanged it. “Or are they too sacred for me to touch?”
“No, they’re just symbols of my status, like your white coat.”
“Oh, so they are sacred.”
The adults laughed, easing some of the tension, but Paz remained wary. There was something wrong with their faces, or maybe he was just seeing with new eyes. It was as if he could penetrate the social masks they displayed to the real person hiding beneath. It was not a pleasant experience: Zwick’s intellectual arrogance sheltering the frightened, driven nerd, Beth’s fear of loneliness generating a spasmodic seductivity…he found it hard to look at his wife. Married people, however intimate, require a reserve of privacy; he felt that he could violate that now, and the ability repelled him. Only Amelia seemed true all the way to the core.
There were questions about the ritual he’d just been through, and he found himself dodging these with studied humor, although he admitted to having been possessed by hisorisha, which Zwick explained away as arising from the effect of entraining rhythms, drugged food, and varying light levels upon the medial temporal lobe of the brain. Apparently it was well established in the literature.
Paz found this explanation more exhausting than the ritual itself. “What happened to Jenny?” he asked when Zwick at last ran down.
“She’s cooking our dinner,” said Amelia. “She’s a good cook, Daddy. We’re having shrimp. I helped peel.”
And here was the girl herself, carrying a steaming wok full of stir-fried shrimp and vegetables. Paz watched her place it on the table, amid applause. She looked up and he met her gaze. A chill flashed up his neck, blossomed out in sweat on his forehead. There was a mask there, too, but behind it was not just Jenny Simpson.
They ate and engaged in the usual chat, in which Paz joined when it would have been rude not to. They seemed like children to him; he was like sitting down at a kids’ birthday party, pleasant, unchallenging, slightly tedious. When they were done, he went out into the garden and picked a few ripe mangoes from his tree. He cut them up efficiently at the table and fed his guests the dulcet yellow flesh, together with the coconut ice cream that Jenny fetched from the freezer.
After this dessert was done, Paz said, “Who’s up for an expedition?”
“Where to?” Lola asked.
“I think we should go by Jenny’s old homestead. We could bring Professor Cooksey a little basket of mangoes.”
“They have plenty of mangoes on the property,” said Jenny.
“Well, we’ll bring a bottle of aguardiente, too. We’ll sit around and drink aguardiente and eat mangoes and talk. They have a big open-air pool with tropical fish in it. We could go skinny-dipping after we get high on aguardiente.”
“I’m up for that,” said Zwick, and Beth Morgensen produced a naughty laugh.
“Shouldn’t we call?” Lola asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Paz. “Dr. Cooksey keeps an open house. He’s a welcoming kind of guy. Isn’t that right, Jenny?”
Who shrugged and said, “I guess.”
“We’ll want bathing suits, those of us who require them,” said Paz.
They all piled into the Volvo and drove to the house on Ingraham. Paz took his bow and arrows along with the fruit and the aguardiente; no one asked why. As predicted, Professor Cooksey was home and perfectly gracious, as if he were used to groups of mainly strangers dropping by in the evening. Cooksey arranged them all around the big table in the terrace, and they drank a round from Paz’s bottle, chased with beers. Cooksey expatiated in a lively manner about the history and architecture of the house and its gardens, and about the construction and ecological
