Blood of Paradise (8 page)

“On top of that,” Eileen said, “you've got the current pack of thieves siphoning government funds to their buddy Saca's election campaign.”

“Accusations like that get tossed around every election.”

“Because they're true.”

“How come they never get proved?”

She shook her head, like he was hopeless. “That'll happen about the same time I give birth to a goat.”

They entered one of the tunnels along the coastal road. Inside, the headlights rippled across a moonscape of rough-hewn rock. It was a good place for bats. And robberies. Jude juiced it a little until they came out again on the far side.

“Excuse me if I'm looking at this wrong,” he said, “but unless I'm missing your drift, what you're trying to say is that Aleris and some of the other people you hang out with think I'm in with the thieves down here. Some sort of modern day Pinkerton. I dunno, maybe you do too.”

“For God's sake—no, I don't. And what I'm trying to say is, even with the others, it's not personal.”

Oh, it feels plenty personal, Jude thought.

“It's just—hear me out, okay?” She wrapped her arms around her legs and settled her chin on her knees. “Everybody's got this sick sense that the few good things that came out of the Peace Accords have come undone, and too much wasn't even started in the first place. There's forty percent poverty in the cities, sixty percent in the countryside. The big scare during the war was that if the guerrillas won you'd have mass migrations to the States. Well, a third of the country has emigrated anyway, with seven hundred a day trying to follow behind, and two thirds of those still here work in the underground economy, if they work at all. The water situation is awful—the rivers may as well be open sewers. Add the industrial waste and pesticide runoff from the plantations, presto—not a waterway in the country isn't polluted. You've got eight-year-olds with machetes in the sugar fields, thirteen-year-olds behind sewing machines in the
maquilas
, all of them making at best a couple bucks a day, millions of squatters crammed into
barrancas
in the city or stuck out in the country in their shoddy little
champas
. You've been to the dig at Joya de Cerén? Fifteen hundred years ago, the Indians ate better food and lived in better houses than any of the poor do now. That's progress for you. And the solution? Karaoke bars and burger joints. More sweatshops churning out crap sneakers and T-shirts.”

She pounded her chin softly against her knee and made a moaning little sigh.

“Now you've got CAFTA coming, which manages to piss on the unions and just about everybody else except the same old cronies. But it makes such a great smoke screen. The
areneros
can carp about jobs, jobs, jobs, but it's just lip service. The system's rigged so the same folks at the top never suffer. There's a real tradition here of screw the losers.”

“Lot of that everywhere,” Jude said.

“Yeah, well it has a real nasty edge to it here. The rich aren't just snotty, they're vicious. The poor disgust them. Embarrass them.
‘Qué grencho,'
ever hear that?”

“Sure. But they make fun of hillbillies back home, too.”

“It's like poverty's a crime. The term ‘vampire state'? It was made for a place like this.”

Actually, Jude thought, it was made for a place like New York, thus the pun on Empire State, but before he could find a way to say that without sounding snide, she'd launched on.

“All the crap you hear about things getting better? Spare me. Economy's been flatlining for five years. Things are as bad as during the war, if not worse, and you don't have the guerrillas to blame it on. Country's still scraping the bottom of the UN's development index despite fifteen years of doing everything Washington wants. Debt load to international banks is obscene but they tax street vendors, not the wealthy. Meanwhile you've got generals at SOUTHCOM testifying to Congress about progressives down here as ‘emerging terrorists.' That's creepy, Jude. Like calling the Maryknolls a terrorist cell—which happened during the war, by the way.”

“Granted, things have ramped up since 9/11, and some of it's kinda off-the-wall.”

“They're scared. Elections have swung left in Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina. Uruguay's next. Probably Bolivia after that. Maybe Mexico. People down here are sick of the corruption and the poverty. So what does the Pentagon do? Claim anybody who won't just shut up while the crooks cash in is on a jihad. You visited the embassy lately?”

“Sure.”

“Then you know. The spooks have landed. Way too many trim fit guys in golf clothes wandering around the halls.”

“Look, I've got beefs with the Pentagon too. Never met a guy in uniform who didn't.”

“Jude, I know that. My dad's pure Corps. My brother's in Iraq. I've heard it all.”

That was news, the bit about her brother. Jude tucked it away, then said, “Well, down here they're building roads. Schools. Clinics. I know. I helped.”

“Not enough. Sorry. Not by a long shot. And not always for the best reasons.”

“That's my fault?”

“The people you work for—”

“Axel's a hydrologist.”

“For whom, Jude? The women lining up barefoot at the
pozos
every morning, carrying the jugs back home on their heads? Or the soft drink company pumping hundreds of gallons a minute, bleeding the aquifers dry, just so they can move on to the next place and do it again.”

She'd done her homework. Jude hated this. God only knew what she'd think if he told her about Malvasio.

He said, “You don't know Axel. He's nobody's stooge.”

“Then they'll bury his findings and hire somebody else. And what about the next guy they tell you to protect? What if he's not quite so noble?”

“I don't have control over that.”

With one hand she gathered her windblown hair while the other reached out again for her toenail to etch away another scab of red polish. “Well, there's the two-buck question, Jude. That lack of control, who you work for—doesn't that mess with your head?”

Sure it does, he thought, and if I could manage a word in edgewise, I'd tell you about it. But before he could wring the piss out of that thought and say something reasonable, a figure tottered out of the darkness into the road. Spotting him in the headlights, Jude slammed his foot down on the brake. The tires squealed across the soft blacktop and Eileen turned white, gripping the dash as the truck fishtailed back and forth, then lurched to a dead stop. The engine sputtered and died, leaving as background only the tick of the radiator, the hush of the wind, the murmur of the distant surf.

Jude opened his door to get out. “Stay in the truck, okay?”

“It's just a
vagabundo.”

“I realize that.”

“Don't hurt him, okay?”

Of all the things she'd said so far, that was the first that cut to the bone. It isn't personal, he thought. Sure. “I don't hurt people,” he said. “It's not what I do.”

He slid out and hailed the man, who swerved on his feet in his rags, clutching a bottle of
aguardiente
, the local white lightning. As Jude drew closer he could smell the filth on his body, the rotted teeth, and yet the man's eyes were feverish and sad. He looked ancient, though Jude guessed his age to be somewhere close to thirty. He asked if there was a problem, and tears welled in the drunk's eyes as he pointed to the roadbed. The carcass of a dog, hit by a passing car, lay in the dusty gravel. Jude went over, knelt beside the animal, and saw that the neck had been snapped—the dog, about the size and shape of a greyhound, lay at a violent angle, blood crusting its head, its eyes dull, chest still.
Aguacateros
, they were called, the stray mutts that slinked around everywhere, the males fully packaged, the females bearing swollen teats from nonstop litters. This one, he noticed, was a female. And apparently, somehow, somewhere, she'd found a friend. Or the friend had found her.

The
vagabundo
shuffled up behind, muttering a slur of heartbreak and anger. Jude said he was going to move the body a little farther off the road—out of respect, to spare it being crushed by another passing car—and the man mewled his thanks. Jude reached under the skeletal body, lifted the dead animal in his arms—so light, he thought, she would've died of starvation soon regardless—and carried her toward a bed of
chichipince
and set her down in the dense, dry vinery. The
vagabundo
followed and perched himself uneasily on a nearby stone, reaching down to stroke her cold flank.

Jude thought about asking her name, but didn't want to inherit her ghost, so he merely whispered,
“Lo lamento”
—I'm sorry—and squeezed the man's shoulder, his hand coming away with grimy dust that he wiped against his shirttail as he walked back to the truck.

He climbed behind the wheel and Eileen said, “I feel awful about what I said when you were getting out. What you did just now, it was …” She screwed up her face, trying to think of the one word that would absolve all the others. “I don't know. I'm just sorry.”

The darkness remained still except for the wind shivering through the trees overhead, the waves throbbing at the bottom of the hill.

“You must think I'm terrible,” she said.

“I think we're all terrible.” He turned the key in the ignition and waited till the six-cylinder kicked back to life with an oily cough of black smoke out the tailpipe. “But only some of us are sorry, and that's the problem.”

8

They continued on in silence and in time passed an evangelical church girded with whitewashed stone, the landmark Jude had been waiting for. He slowed for the steep turn into La Perla—a village of rustic-to-shabby homes made of brick or cinder block with barbed wire coiled around every yard, every rooftop, even the central pen housing the community's chickens. He'd driven right past it at least twice during his search for Eileen way back when, one of dozens of tiny coastal
pueblitos
along the Carretera del Litoral he hadn't given a second thought. No way he could've checked out every village, and yet he still felt unlucky. If you'd found her then, he thought, the spat you just had would've been over a month ago.

“Just follow this road back all the way to the beach,” Eileen said, pointing the way. Then her hand reached across the seat and squeezed Jude's knee. “Look, I want to clear the air, make sure you realize how sorry I am for some of the things I said.”

“It's not necessary. Really.”

“I just wanted to explain where people's heads are at, mine included. I don't hold you personally responsible or anything for how things are down here, okay? I'm not that dense. And I shouldn't have gone on and on the way I did, either. I was just bothered by the way Aleris treated you and I get chatty when I'm nervous.”

Jude liked the sound of that but he liked the feel of her hand more. He felt stirring in the bone zone and squirmed a little to squelch it as she added, “It's not like I don't know where you're coming from. Like I said, I've got a brother over in Iraq, First Marines. He got sent into Fallujah, after those … contractors … got strung up on the bridge.”

She was referring to the detail of Blackwater Security ops, all former special forces types, who got ambushed in a Baathist stronghold a week after the marines took over for the Eighty-second Airborne. The marines got told to make things happen, and almost immediately they engaged insurgents in a thirty-six-hour firefight. Reports conflicted as to why Blackwater sent its men into that hornet's nest: Some said they were on CIA business. Others scoffed at that, saying it was a vanilla recon run for a private logistics convoy coming through the next day. Regardless, the insurgents were waiting. The images of jubilant crowds and the charred, smoldering bodies hung from the bridge girders were broadcast worldwide, America recoiling, Islam cheering, the rest of the world thinking: Get back to me later. Sent a shudder through the trade, that was for sure. Then the White House ordered the marines back in with a vengeance, to make a point: This ain't Mogadishu.

“You should thank God you're not over there,” she said.

“I don't have the kind of experience they're after.”

In truth, some firms were hiring anyone with a pulse and it was backfiring; ordinary Iraqis were growing weary of scruffy cowboys armed to the teeth strutting around. Now America was recruiting here for the job—the U.S. liked the Salvadorans, kidnappings were common here and war was nothing new. The local boys hardly lacked enthusiasm: “The Iraqi Dream,” some called it. Guards could earn twelve hundred dollars a month in Iraq, compared to two hundred here, plus food, clothing, insurance for their families if they were killed or maimed. Hundreds of
veteranos
had shown up for the recruiters, and the ones not chosen almost rioted.

Noticing Eileen had fallen silent, Jude glanced her way and saw her with her head cocked, braced by her hand, her eyes blank. “Fallujah,” she said. “God. You know how well that's gone, right? The town's been a haven for smugglers forever. Saddam used them for ripping off the oil-for-food program. They aren't insurgents, they're gangsters, with mortars and RPGs. They use women and kids as human shields, hide snipers and weapons inside mosques, hijack ambulances and load them with explosives, then send them barreling toward checkpoints, the whole deal. The marines knew what killing the contractors was all about: The insurgents wanted a massive retaliation, so they could get footage of dead women and kids on the news. The marines didn't want to fall for that, but the White House was scared of looking weak. You know what happened next. Six hundred civilian dead the first week alone, just what the bad guys wanted. Then the Iraqi units that were supposed to help out took fire before they even left Baghdad and just turned around, saying they hadn't signed up to fight other Iraqis. Our guys were on their own and things just got uglier. The press was awful, especially over there. The suits had to pull the marines out, turn it back over to the locals, which means pretty much the same hoods who'd been shooting back the day before. I'm not a knee-jerk peacenik, I couldn't go home for the holidays if I was. I'm glad Saddam's gone, I wish we could get rid of every asshole like him in the world, including some of the jerks who run things here—but, oh yeah, I forgot, this is a real democracy, our model for Iraq. Well, pity the poor Iraqis, you know?” She rubbed her eyes, moaned. “I'm wandering, sorry, but what I mean is the whole thing just feels like a hoax. My brother, he's alive but I haven't heard from him in way too long. I'm worried sick about him. For a lot of reasons. Something I don't talk about much.”