Toward the Light Read online

  How had this young man gotten mixed up in Guatemalan politics, though? Luz imagined tapping his arm and asking why he wanted Martin Benavides dead. She didn’t realize she’d laughed out loud until he turned, startled.

  Calm, inquisitive cat’s eyes—green and gold—explored the false, every-day face she showed the world. Pale lashes. Small furrows, even paler than the rest of his face, at the outside corners of his eyes where he smiled or squinted in the tropical sun.

  Dropping her head in retreat from his scrutiny, Luz caught sight of his hands, long and narrow like the rest of his body, one index finger tracing a lazy figure-eight on the newspaper. The warmth was as real as if he were stroking her arm.

  She swallowed. That life was finished. Preparing to kill—even when it was simple justice, an eye for an eye—exiled her from the rest of humanity. The lesson of Teresa and the baby fresh in her mind, Luz shifted closer to the window and fixed her eyes on the passing scenery.

  The bus chugged along, picking up and dropping off passengers. When they veered onto a busy avenue, the man settled the tight rectangle of newspaper on the seat between them. He stood, hand grasping the metal bar above the seat, and a soft current of air passed between them, separating them further. The phrase “good luck” popped into Luz’s head, that all-purpose encouragement to an airplane seatmate running for his next flight, to a young adult off for a job interview, to a fifth-grader at the start of a spelling bee. To her, an aspiring assassin? The man didn’t speak, however. He released his hand and pushed his way toward the front of the bus, leaving Luz alone.

  The clouds, which had earlier been billowy white meringues in a dazzling blue sky, had darkened. Now thick storm clouds massed over the western mountains. Through the dusty, half-opened bus window, Luz watched them drop toward the city, coiled thick and dirty, like the forward line of an advancing army. A single gray shadow broke off from the rest and covered the sun. A crack of lightning. The smell of ozone in the air. The street vendors scrambled to lay sheets of plastic over their wares. Women with shopping bags took shelter in doorways, as if they could escape the coming storm.

  Luz knew she couldn’t escape. She slid the newspaper into her bag.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A cloud blew across the sun as Evan stepped from the bus. In the sudden change of light, the shabby city buildings glowed with haphazard splashes of paint—melon, lime, maize. Then a sudden drum roll of thunder rattled windows. All around him, people with café-au-lait faces and bright clothes paused and raised their eyes to the sky. Evan saw the scene as a mural extending larger than life along the walls of some grand public building, a mural he would paint one day—the vibrant and diverse people of Guatemala. His secret ambition that, as yet, existed only as a series of sketches.

  His old painting teacher’s voice echoed like the refrain of a favorite song: To find the big picture, first you must go small. So Evan singled out a young Indian hunkering on the sidewalk, an infant cradled in a woven cloth sling on her back. She wore a flowered huipil over a long lavender- and red-striped skirt, and she fanned a charcoal brazier on which sat a half-dozen ears of tiny mountain corn. The rest of her body motionless. Her eyes toward heaven, waiting for rain.

  With a belch of sooty exhaust, the bus pulled away from the curb. The girl pressed her hand to the smudged glass and swiveled to keep her pensive gaze on him as the bus carried her onward to … whatever she came for. Evan walked a block to an intersecting calle and hailed a cab. No sense getting wet in the thunderstorm that was surely going to drench them all.

  Richard had said to call as soon as he could, so Evan paused only to grab a cold beer before picking up the phone. The connection opened on the first ring.

  “Clement,” announced the familiar rasp at the other end.

  “Hi, Richard. It’s Evan. I’m home.”

  “You sat next to the girl?”

  “Yep, no problem.” Evan pulled off his shoes. He spread his toes and massaged the soles of his feet on the rough homespun rug.

  “That’s great. Let’s hear the rest of it.”

  Evan pulled a sketch pad from the bookcase. “She sat so I could see her from the drugstore. I took the seat next to her. Left the paper. End of story.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “No, was she supposed to?” Evan sketched while he spoke, quick strokes of charcoal: the street scene, dark clouds, sparks from the brazier, the corn-roaster’s face tilted to the sky.

  “No, no—I only wondered how she seemed to you.”

  Evan penciled in embroidery detail on the woman’s huipil. “Seemed?” he asked, not sure what Richard wanted to know. Evan did occasional errands for Richard, delivering keys or envelopes, like this job had been, often plump with cash. When it came to their business transactions, Richard, otherwise genial and outgoing, seldom asked more than if the job was complete. “She wore dark slacks and a red shirt,” said Evan, always more at home with the visual. He replayed the minutes on the bus—the quick glance when she checked for the identifying newspaper, careful not to acknowledge any familiarity, her distress when he bumped into her, her obvious embarrassment when he jumped at her laugh. How she’d stared out the window then, her hands—brown on the backs, ivory on the underside—at rest on her lap. Not nervous, self-contained. “She didn’t say anything, but she laughed once. Must’ve thought of something funny.”

  “So you would say she didn’t appear overwhelmed?”

  “Yes, Richard—I mean, no, not overwhelmed. Tired. Cautious.” Evan visualized the scene. “She sat quietly, like she was one of those market women who can squat for hours at a time.” He took the pencil he’d set aside. Evan sketched hands, one on top of the other, palms up, fingers cupped.

  “Good, good.” Richard should’ve hung up then, but he didn’t say goodbye. The silence lengthened. Thousands of miles away, Richard cleared his throat. “It’s just that Luz is—” Then, abruptly, Richard barked, “Okay, bye,” and was gone.

  Evan let the last of the beer slide down his throat. He moved to the back window of his house where the light filtered in, too green and soft to be good for painting, but with spectacular, long views over his neighbors’ gardens to the distant volcanoes.

  Luz. The woman on the bus was called Luz. Evan thumbed through his sketches. He’d intended to draw the woman fanning the charcoal fire, but they were her hands, Luz’s hands. Her wide-set eyes with straight brows. Her nose, strong and uncompromising, but with a voluptuous flair at the nostrils. The slope of her neck, her forehead. Her dark hair, heavy like rope, except where it curled around her ear. Luz. Richard had never let slip a name before, never volunteered anything.

  Luz. She was the empty space in the center of his masterpiece, the missing image. Evan needed to paint her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Luz handed her letter through the bars of the gate to a man in military khaki. He left her standing there while he withdrew to the adjacent guardhouse, where he read the letter and then picked up a phone. As he spoke, he smiled, letting his eyes wander over her body.

  Luz retreated behind a stone pillar. The letter, an appointment for a job interview, had come tucked in the newspaper along with directions to the Benavides’ compound and a small, padded manila envelope with a separate last-minute request from Richard.

  This morning, she followed the unnecessarily detailed directions. It was quite simple—bus from a corner two blocks from her apartment to the center of the city, change at Avenida de las Americas to go south to the fancy colonias where the rich people lived.

  Rich people. In Portsmouth, they lived—well, they didn’t actually live in Portsmouth but in Rye and Kennebunkport and Newcastle-by-the-Sea—in multi-gabled white houses with mullioned windows, deep front porches, and lawns, precisely cut in diamond patterns, sloping to the ocean. Houses shuttered nine months out of the year.

  But these Guatemalans were in an entirely different category of rich. As her bus rumbled southward, the colorful tapestry of Guatemalan stre
et life subsided. The catchy percussion of street performers, gone. The calls of pushcart vendors hawking their fruits or vegetables or sweets or fresh bread, silenced. Graffiti, whitewashed.

  Houses became grander: two-stories, three stories, four. Fountains, statues, topiary, uniformed doormen. Hummers and BMWs glided along the streets, helicopters idled on rooftops. A giraffe peered over a wall, munching low-hanging tree leaves.

  Luz’s destination was a compound that extended an entire city block. A security barrier of retractable steel posts blocked the driveway entrance. Beefy men in black uniforms patrolled the perimeter; two stood watch in a tower at the corner, each carrying a long gun. Everything except a small section of the uppermost floor was hidden behind a towering wall, painted anonymous white, the top embedded with shards of glass and coils of razor wire. Martin Benavides had come a long way since he was a soldier of the revolution like her father—sleeping in a tent in the mountains, skinning iguanas, cooking over a fire, bathing in cold streams. She was going to kill him with a smile on her face.

  “Señorita.”

  Luz jumped. The guard had returned.

  “Everything appears to be satisfactory,” he said, speaking directly to her breasts.

  He opened the gate just enough for Luz to pass and motioned her in. As she squeezed through, he stood so close she could see the enlarged pores on his neck and the sparse black bristles on his chin. Overpowering cologne with the scent of cheap laundry detergent blasted Luz when he reached across her body to check that the gate had relatched. When his damp fingers clutched her elbow, however, Luz yanked her arm away.

  The man narrowed his eyes. A smile played around the corners of his mouth. “Wait there,” he said, motioning to the guardhouse. “Someone will come to collect you.”

  The place was, at most, ten feet on a side. One wall was covered with video monitors, another with filing cabinets stacked floor to ceiling. A wooden bench opposite the filing cabinets was dusty and littered with old newspapers. The door and a small window took up the side facing the gate. Luz stayed next to the door to avoid being penned in. But the guard, who remained outside only long enough for a throat-clearing gargle and spit into the bushes, shooed her inside and slammed the door behind them. He slouched on a stool in front of the window, feet hooked around the rungs. His splayed-out knees bumped Luz’s leg. She moved closer to the bench, but there was a sticky spot in the middle next to an overturned cup.

  Luz had dressed carefully this morning in her blue silk suit. With its long skirt and conservative lines, it would suffice for the most important job interview of her life. Besides, her mother had taken her to buy it, one of the last times she’d been strong enough to leave the house. The dress was way too subdued for her taste, but it caught her mother’s eye and unspoken between them was the understanding she needed something suitable for her mother’s funeral. Luz hugged her mother and agreed it was lovely.

  She remained standing and maneuvered toward the far wall. “I guess you don’t get many visitors coming here,” Luz said to the second guard, an older man who never moved his gaze from monitors displaying the barbwired perimeter of the estate.

  “This is the service entrance,” he said. “If you get the job, you will come and go this way but with a coded name tag you’ll swipe in a reader outside the gate. You’ll still have to wait for us to match you to the photo on file and free the lock. But it’s routine at that point, and you won’t need an escort.”

  Luz countered her mounting claustrophobia by reciting memorized facts about her imaginary life in Miami: two children in her care, a girl and a boy, eight and ten. Father traveled a lot, wife often joined him. Light duties except when the parents were away. It fit admirably with what she might be expected to do with this job.

  At the security gate, the guards authorized deliveries. A plumber was escorted in. Several people placed their badges in the reader. The screen inside showed a face shot, which the guard matched to the live person standing a few feet away. The clock on the wall crept toward eleven thirty. Her skirt clung to her legs, and small beads of sweat trickled down the nape of her neck and gathered at her temples. Luz hoped she hadn’t sweated enough to stain the fabric under her arms.

  She’d spent the night tossing and turning, unable to quell the pressure to perform her best and get the damn job. It was only that strain, Luz told herself, not the beginning of another downward spiral, but sounds echoed, and cloudy, blurred shapes peopled her world as if her head was wrapped in layers of gauze. Thank goodness she’d explored the kitchen this morning. Whoever had set up her apartment—the man from the bus, perhaps—had left coffee beans in one of the bright red canisters on her white tile kitchen counter and a bag of sugar in another. So she’d made a pot and drunk it, dark and sweet. The cobwebs receded, but by the time she’d finished and dressed, she was quivering with fatigue and nausea.

  The door flew open. A woman with the air of an exotic tropical bird swooped in on the highest heels Luz had ever seen. As she glided to a stop in front of Luz, her billowing emerald scarf settled over a scarlet dress. A quetzal, Luz thought.

  “I am Alicia Muñoz,” the woman said. “Come with me.” Luz’s extended hand hung in the air in an unmet handshake when Alicia made a sudden about-face. “Señor de la Vega has been waiting,” she called over her shoulder.

  I’ve been waiting, too.

  Seventeen years since Martin Benavides murdered my father. Seventeen years of watching my mother’s spirit shrivel and die, of being the awkward, brown-skinned outsider.

  Luz struggled to keep up as Alicia darted along a covered portico that ran the length of the mansion. She stopped at a small door about halfway along the arcade and keyed a code. Once inside, they walked on industrial carpet past nondescript beige walls. Alicia knocked on a door at the far end of the hall before cracking it open an inch. “I have the nanny.”

  A short, round man with a trim mustache and beard came to the door. He waved Luz in with a courtly gesture. “Pase adelante, señorita.”

  Appear as tall as possible when facing danger—a proverb from her father’s infinite store of folk wisdom—sprang to mind as Luz reached the threshold. So, shoulders thrust back and chin high, and an inner smile of gratitude to her father for the many ways he shared his world with her, Luz stepped into the lion’s den. Alicia walked on.

  “I am Raul de la Vega. I have served Martin Benavides since his time leading the revolution. I was his personal secretary while he was president. Now I handle the staffing for his household.” De la Vega settled into an ornate chair, losing only a few inches in the process. He lifted a thin folder from his immaculate desk and, balancing it on his belly, opened and read from it. He enunciated the bald facts of her made-up position in Miami. Luz, right hand covering the trembling left, waited for his questions: What, exactly, were your daily responsibilities? What challenges and problems did you face? How did you handle them? Most rewarding part of the job? Least? Biggest accomplishment?

  Unless he threw her a curveball, Luz knew she was well prepared. Richard, at their last meeting, had played de la Vega’s role. In the living area of her Miami hotel room, curtains closed against the blazing afternoon sun, Richard had posed question after question. He’d played it avuncular—So, my dear … He’d played it borderline hostile—What makes you think you can … He’d adopted a fake German accent—Vat vould ve haf to pay you fur zhis vork—which had her giggling uncontrollably.

  Finally, Richard slapped the pages together and applauded slowly. “Señorita Aranda,” he said, as he walked into the kitchenette, “I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell could use a cold beer right now.” She was ready.

  De la Vega set the folder down. “So, Luz Aranda, you have been away from home for a long time,” he said, echoing the sentiments of the airport immigration man, “but we are delighted to have you join our family. I have checked your references, of course. Your former employers have nothing but praise.”

  After all her preparation,
after the waiting and the ogling, after Alicia Muñoz’s rudeness, it wasn’t an interview at all. Luz had the job. She’d had it all along. A sense of buoyancy—light-headedness, really—replaced the morning’s nausea. Dizzy with the suddenness, with relief and incredulity. How Richard made this happen could remain a glorious mystery as far as she was concerned. It didn’t matter. She was in.

  By the time Señor de la Vega concluded his pleasantries, he was on the phone to arrange her ID. One more giant step. Each obstacle in her path she overcame, each door that opened, brought with it increasing quiet in Luz’s head, as though she was moving in stages away from the cacophony of crowded rooms into a more private space. In one sense, of course, it was the hollow quiet of doors closing, leaving her increasingly isolated. But Luz preferred to imagine the wind at her back, wafting her onward.

  Then de la Vega said, “Let’s go to the children’s wing.”

  No.

  She squeezed the front of the chair cushion. Her practice sessions always ended with a walk on the beach or a beer with Richard. With her sole focus on getting the job, Luz had postponed acknowledging the inevitable consequence: getting it meant close daily contact with the Benavides. She diverted her gasp of discomfort into a bright day care–cheery grin. “Tell me about the children.”

  “Only one child. Cesar requires a nanny in the afternoon from 1:00 p. m., when his tutor leaves, until bedtime. His sister was recently sent to a private school in Spain.” The man paused, and with the first sense of the steel behind his florid manner, said, “The family does not wish that information to become general knowledge, Señorita Aranda.” He slid down from his perch. “Come with me. We’ll go see Cesar.”

  There’s nothing to worry about. He was a kid. Nothing to worry about. He’d never lived in the mountains, never fought. He hadn’t killed her father. But his grandfather had. Querido Dios, don’t let there be enough family resemblance to see a killer in the boy’s face.