Her will crumbled to dust and in total defeat, she handed her the remnants of the object of the nightlong battle: the painkillers.
“Go ahead, I can’t argue any longer. You want to die? Here, take them all!”
Herminia’s focus didn’t extend far beyond the relentless wall of pain that enclosed her, shutting out sight, sound and reason, but the emotion of Beth’s voice did register. The pills she craved were now hers, but at what price? She compromised: rather than the whole bottle and ‘please God, just let me die,’ she shook only a few into her hand and washed them down with a Coke. “Sorry. Herminia very bad. Always, very bad,” she softly sobbed. “My own mother, she no wan me. Who are you, Beth? I doan unnerstan.”
“Trust me, you make me wonder, too,” Beth sighed, mentally reviewing the events of the previous twenty-four hours,
“Do you remember that first day we met and after breakfast how you took the change the lady gave me?”
“Si. Si. I remember.”
“Well, I saw you give it away to those little children. It’s stuff like that about you: I think you just haven’t been in control of any situation your whole life. You’ve never had the opportunity to see what you are capable of. I would like to help you because I think you’re worth it, but you too have to think you’re worth it and go to a drug treatment program as soon as your face is better. No more going back to Hotel Paradise. No more being a prostitute. No more drugs. Can you promise me that you will go into a treatment center?”
“Si, I swear to the Holy Mother of God,” she vowed, making the sign of the cross over her chest and kissing her
thumb.
“Tell me about your babies.” If she wanted to avoid the image of Mike waiting in dreamland, she needed to keep
talking
“Herminia has three children. All leeve weeth Mommy.”
“Your real mother?”
“No, in barrio Quince de Septiembre where I grow up. For only Jeremy, the youngest, I know who ees father, others, I doan know because I get pregnant while working.”
“How old are your children?”
“Christian ees oldest, nine. Then girl, Catalina, she ees eight. Jeremy ees five. I am pregnant other times, but my mother make me have abortion.”
“Why don’t you ever talk about them?”
“Ees because I no like to theenk about them. Have much guilty. Doan eat much, just smoke, then too skinny and dirty for work. When I no breeng money for babies, Mommy, she tell Herminia, ‘no come no more, they no like you because you are puta. Very much Catalina, she no like me for this. So, I go to house only eef I have money, but I doan like because Mommy yell at cheeldren and heet them weeth stick. I yell Mommy for heet cheeldren and they mad at me for fight her. ‘Geet out and no come back,’ they say. Then leeving een street. Move to Chauita so my babies no can see. Theese money I steal, I
no geeve all to Mommy because maybe she go away, no take care of babies. I geeve her only three hunner dollar. For theese reason, I hide money in your baño.”
“But, why didn’t you ever get another job and take them to live with you in an apartment or something?”
“What can Herminia do? No feenish school, only fourth grade. Mommy, she need money.”
“So how did she take care of them when you were away?”
“Ees very hard. Some money come from government and Mommy make cheeldren sell clothes.”
Beth remembered the tunnel, she was sure of it because she recalled that the lights were on, but she must have nodded off shortly after for it was afternoon and Herminia, the mummy, was telling her it was time to wake up. They had arrived in Chauita. Already, she felt better.
* * *
Anxiously she waited for the crowded bus to empty onto Chauita’s dusty main street. She couldn’t see him, butTruman was out there somewhere. He’d wrap her up in his arms and hold her until the waves of revulsion that swept continually through her, suffocating her soul like a dank fetid fog, lifted, and she would breathe again. But, why couldn’t she see Truman’s car, nor spot him in the street? He could have walked, that would explain the missing car, but where was he?
Down from the bus at last, she stood waiting, studying the street in either direction. He wasn’t there, nor did she find him in the bar across the street. She gathered up her things and they walked to Cabañas Arrecifes, Herminia’s bandages drawing curious stares from every person they passed and once there, she discovered Truman’s car to be missing and his apartment door locked. Don Alberto, to her inquiries, replied that yes, Truman knew she was coming today because he instructed them to prepare her room. Yet, he also said that he had departed several hours earlier without saying anything. There was no message for her in her room, with Doña Cecilia, Jesus or at the bar. All she could assume was that something had happened. She asked Doña Cecilia to call the transit police to see if there had been an accident, ‘Truman is fine,’ she assured her without calling anyone. It was maddening. Was she the only one worried?
Herminia, even with three quarters of a bottle of pills in her, still wouldn’t sleep, so she sat in the room and took her frustrations out on her. “What a fool I’ve been!” she said. Herminia’s response was indistinguishable, but it didn’t matter: she just needed to talk. “When am I going to wake up to reality and accept that I am alone in this world? I don’t have family any longer and there is nobody I can trust, it’s me, solo. What a fool to think that someone is going to come waltzing into my life and be perfect! Wake up, Beth! It’s not going to happen! What? What did you say?” She bent close to Herminia’s mouth and listened.
“Truman no good!”
“I know, Herminia. He’s cold. I needed him so much. He was the only person I thought I could turn to and he can’t even be bothered to be here.”
“No,” she answered, nudging Beth’s hip for emphasis, “not for theese. You really doan listen what Leon tell you?”
“Leon? You mean, creepy Leon? No, why?”
“Leon say that Truman work for his brother as traficante.”
“What?”
“Si, he say theese but, en car, I no unnerstan much. Later, when we make sex, I make heem tell me everything. Say they hide cocaine in log barges and…” She told a bizarre tale of Gordon Edward as a drug lord with Truman as an assistant and of Leon’s intention to rob them with checks forged by George Dearling!
“What?” Beth was stunned beyond belief: log barges were just what Mike Henderson had been asking about! Had
Herminia put that idea in his head and it led to her getting raped? “Leon didn’t say anything like that, Herminia. Did you tell Mike that he had?”
“Si, tell heem everything or keel me. I theenk Meester Mike work weeth them and this is why he get money in tin cans.”
“Oh my God Herminia, what have you done? Truman’s not a drug dealer. Can’t you see that it’s just that Leon is envious of his brother, angry that he isn’t the clever one? He makes up these stories about his brother being a criminal so he doesn’t have to face his own shortcomings.”
“Wha? Beth, talk normal. I doan know thees word, ‘envious’ and what are ‘shore comings’?”
Beth couldn’t take any more, she needed air. “I’ll explain it all later. Get some sleep, okay?” She lingered in the doorway, staring back at Herminia. Had all of this happened because of that woman’s over-active imagination? She shook her head, unsure of how she felt about anybody, then closed the door gently. She found her way to the beach where she lowered her aching body to the sand, and wept. When she could cry no longer, a great weariness descended upon her and she returned to the room, swallowed two pills, curled into a ball and slept.
* * *
Wendy, Alberto and Cecilia’s daughter, awakened Beth at sunset. With her favorite party dress she wore a shy grinand carried a small silver dish with a note upon it lain over with a single red rose. Barely awake and groggy from the pills she’d taken, she picked up the rose and sniffed – hardly a hint of odor. Wendy giggled then ran off leaving Beth alone to unfold the note. It was from Truman: an invitation to join him on his patio for dinner. She looked at the note in disgust: when she had really needed him, he hadn’t been there, and obviously by choice! There was nothing in this folded piece of paper to make up for that! She tossed it and the rose onto the bureau and sat on the edge of the bed, dropping her head into her hands.
She remained so but a moment, before rising again to study herself in the mirror. Her hair was a big snarl, there was swelling and discoloration around her right eye and more at the side of her mouth, a sewn cut below her chin, her eyes were lined with red and dried streaks of tears lined her cheeks. Great! All right, she would go, but with strengthened resolve not to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. She’d be as indifferent and cool with him as his cavalier attitude regarding meeting her showed him to be – and she wasn’t going to show up looking like this. Into the bathroom she went and began brushing out her hair. The facial makeup Herminia had induced her to buy stank to high heaven, but it covered the strange yellow and purple tones and that was good enough for Truman; besides, she would keep her distance. Smearing the stuff on, she recalled sunscreening for their snorkeling adventure, when she asked him to carry her. He must think I’m pretty humorous, she thought staring at herself: he’s probably up there right now, laughing at my idiotic letter. Well, I’ll do this, and then I guess I’ll have to leave Chauita. It’ll be the early morning bus back to San Jose and I’ll figure things out from there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Truman, wearing a white dinner jacket and open collar blue shirt over a white turtleneck, appeared relaxed, smiling sheepishly as she appeared in the doorway. Stock still, she stood between the open patio doors with hands clamped to her hips taking it all in. He sat on his patio behind a table set with white linen, china and crystal stemware. On a sideboard, dinner: lobster, wild rice and a fresh salad, and to his left, a bottle of white wine on ice. A Mozart piano concerto came softly from corner speakers. The air reeked of aftershave. Nature, on his side, provided the perfect backdrop: above the Caribbean, purple clouds edged with the pinks of sunset drifted lazily. There was even a gentle sea breeze to flutter the leaves of his potted palms and tease her hunger with sumptuous odors. If she'd been in a better mood – if he had been there to meet her and they had talked – it could have been a most wonderful surprise, but this had the distinct look of seduction about it: wrong move, Truman! Was he really thinking this was more important than being there when she arrived? Besides, he’d lied to her and he looked ridiculous in that jacket. Remaining where she was that her injuries wouldn’t be noticed, she focused on the stereo’s dancing columns of light to maintain a stern expression. “Truman, I’m getting a lot of confusing signals from you and it’s driving me crazy. I need to know where you’re coming from.”
“What’s going on? Why won’t you sit down?” Mr. Innocence. He paused, then not receiving a response, continued:
“Where I’m coming from? You know I just came from Nicaragua and Honduras.”
“Truman, please. You know what I’m talking about. I want to understand about you not coming to meet me today or for that matter, not being here the whole day. I want to know why in the cocoa plantation you pushed me away, then on the phone, say that missing me is driving you mad. I want to understand the reasons for all of that and what you intend to do about it. It’s called, ‘where you’re coming from,’ okay? And please, let it be the truth.”
“You know I’ll tell you the truth, I always do.”
“No mister, you don’t, that’s one of the problems.”
“Okay, but you need to come over here and sit down, I have important things to explain: that’s why I made this dinner, so take a seat, please.”
“First I want a few honest answers. Tell me, did you receive my letter?”
“I did. Yes, I did. You see, that’s just one…”
Beth cut him short with a sharply upraised palm. “And do you remember when we spoke on the phone and I told you I’d be on this mornings bus?”
“Of course. I’ve been thinking of…”
The silencing palm again muzzled him. “You also said you would be there to meet my bus but no, you couldn’t be
bothered. So what are you doing to me, Truman?”
“Okay, you’re right, I should have been there. I’m sorry, but I wanted everything perfect when we got together. So you see, I haven’t been ‘doing anything’ to you. Now come on, what I have to say isn’t easy, so give me a break here and don’t make this any harder than it already is.”
“That’s it? You decided that ‘you needed to talk’ and, just like that, meeting me is no longer important. That’s lame.
You might at least have called to see if I was alive. Everything isn’t just about you, Truman! But apparently, what I needed doesn’t matter to you.” She could see his tension building. He couldn’t understand why she was so angry, it was written all
over his face. She didn’t care. He deserved it. He avoided her eyes, pursing his lips and looking fixedly at the floor. She might have backed off, but too little sleep and way too much aggravation had taken their toll. To hell with behaving herself, where had that ever gotten her in life? She was mad at the world, Truman included, and besides, he was no angel. For one, he had lied to her, insisting that he hardly knew Gene Frazer, but what was it Gene said? ‘We’re old war buddies,’ he’d bragged.
‘I’ve know Truman for years’… And the damn place looked like the set for an X-rated movie. Is that was what this was all about? Her voice was shrill when she continued. “What is this, anyhow? The Grand Seduction, feed the girl a little wine and music and make your big conquest? Well, guess what? I’m in no mood.”
“No, no, take it easy, you don’t understand, I’m not trying to seduce you. What’s the matter? You know I wouldn’t do anything like that to you.”
“The matter is that I’m feeling like I can’t trust you anymore. You lie.”
“Why do you keep talking about lying? I haven’t lied to you. My God, I’ve told you secret truths I hadn’t spoken a word of since they happened.”
“Oh yes, you did lie!” she retorted. “What about Gene Frazer?” She abused the name contemptuously. “The first day I met you, you lied about him. Why was that, huh?”
“What? Who are you talking about?”
“Gene Frazer, the cowboy guy I saw with you and when I asked about him, you said he was someone you didn’t know
well. Remember now?” A strange expression washed over his face. He sat there studying her and swiped at a nervous tic in the corner of his eye. She had seen that twitch before, but only when he reminisced about the war. What was he hiding this time?
“I’d forgotten about his new name,” he replied. “Well okay then, maybe you’re right. I apologize if I lied but, if so, it was about someone I was trying to forget I had ever known. When you asked about him I had just thrown him out of here several days earlier, and I think what I said about him wasn’t so much of a lie. I think I said he’s bad news and I didn’t want you to assume that he was a friend of mine.” Truman rubbed at his temples, glancing about as though searching for an escape, but there was nowhere to go. He fixed her with a steady stare. “Who told you what about Sinclair?”
“Sinclair?”
“Sinclair is the name I knew him by. Maybe it was an alias and Gene Frazer is his real name, but who knows?”
“He told me about himself,” Beth answered.
Upon her reply, his head jerked backwards as though he had been slapped firmly across the face. “You were talking with Sinclair? How the hell did that happen?”
“Do you remember the dinner party I was invited to? I met him there. Why?”
“Stay far away from that man!”
Beth was startled. The power of his voice seemed to reach out and shake her by the shoulders. “Stay away from him?
Hey, what’s this? You have no right to tell me whom I can or cannot talk with. I’ll speak with whomever I wish, so just forget that! And what for? Why are you so mad at him anyhow? He said it was because he had to fire you when the pressures of war got to be too much. Sounds to me like you’re over-reacting; maybe you should have been grateful.”
“Beth, he’s dangerous and it worries me that he was around you. Did that bastard follow you, or was he already at the party when you arrived?”
“Oh please, do you actually believe that he’d track me down because you’re angry with him about something that
happened so many years ago? That’s a bit paranoid, don’t you think? He doesn’t strike me as the least bit dangerous. We
talked and had coffee and he was a perfect gentleman, just a little heavy on McCarthy era politics, but for an ex-CIA agent, I would guess that’s normal. Do you want to know what he said about you?”
“What? What did he say about me?” He sounded exactly as nervous as a person would be whose lie had been
discovered.
“He said you were old war buddies. And you know what else? He doesn’t have anything against you; in fact, he
admires you. Said you have great military leadership and he is deeply indebted to you. So, what’s it all about?” No answer was offered up. He just sat there looking at her with his face contorted into a look suspiciously akin to possessiveness. A smile came to her lips, the first in a long while. “Is it jealousy?”
Despite her grin, Truman’s stolid expression hadn’t changed one iota. “That man is not a joke,” he continued. “There are things more ungodly horrible about him than you could believe. I mean it Beth, stay away from him.”
“All right, if you insist, but tell me why.”
“He was a CIA intelligence officer whose specialty was interrogation. He tortured people.”
“Him? Oh, come on!”
“Yes, him.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“It’s a long story and not very pretty. Just trust that I am sure.”
“Trust hasn’t been working so well between us, I’d rather know, thank you. We have plenty of time – tell me.” The stern expression she’d molded onto her face softened of its own volition because curiously, despite the slant of conversation, she found comfort in his presence and the sound of his voice offered reassurance that the world might yet return to normal, but she had promised herself to be firm: concentrating, she restored the frown and offered a disapproving glare.
“You want to hear about torture?” he quizzed.
“I’m fast becoming an expert,” she replied curtly, not altering her firmly held scowl.
“You certainly have a morbid curiosity.”
“Perhaps I do, but I’d rather know the whole truth right here and now.”
“Well okay, the truth. Let’s see… When was that?” He became thoughtful, staring at nothing and cupping his chin with his palms while she came a bit closer to the table.
She studied the food, stopping when Truman appeared ready to speak, but he only rolled his eyes and wiped a hand over his face, struggling with thoughts. She pulled a chair to the far end of the table and sat. “Wow, this looks great,” she whispered peeking under lids. “It just hit me: I haven’t eaten a thing since before everything happened. You did say you’ve made this dinner so we can relax and talk. Well, I’m famished. This stuff is way too good to waste; let’s eat.” Her voice broke his concentration. He frowned, looking towards her, perhaps because she hadn’t sat near him, or did it have to do with Gene Frazer?
“I have been thinking so much lately,” he said at last, “and most of it I would rather had never entered my mind. But you, yes and Herminia too, have caused me to examine myself and my past. I don’t know how I’ve operated for so long without looking at the big picture of who I am and what I’ve become, but recently, I have. This entire trip, my head was spinning like a top. I came back with an entire speech prepared for you. The thing is, it was all crap because it avoided things like Sinclair, but actually my problems began with him and the rest of his friends. So, if I’m going to do this right, he should be included.”
“Well, go ahead, then,” she mumbled around a cream cheese stuffed celery stick. “Don’t mind me, I’m listening.”
“First of all, that man isn’t my buddy. Make sure you get that straight. I hadn’t seen that nightmare with feet for years, then, out of the blue, he waltzed in here one day calling himself Gene Frazer. ‘Just popping in to renew old acquaintances,’ that’s what the bastard chirped, chatting away as though we were long lost friends, but my blood ran cold at the sight of him. He claimed that he was ‘so happy to have located an old friend in Costa Rica’ because he was retired and living here now. I told Gene Frazer or John Sinclair, whatever his name was, to re-lose himself and not come back.” He looked up expectantly.
Beth was scooping mashed potatoes. “Okay, so he stopped in to see you and you weren’t happy to see him. Not too morbid yet, sounds like it’s strictly your problem.”
“I haven’t started. I will now, but I’ll have to put it all in perspective. Soon after I graduated college, I married Lucia and shortly thereafter, joined the Guardia Nacional. I was a very patriotic youth, terribly misinformed, but fiercely loyal to the government which was under attack from all sides. Foolishly, I was a believer in the honesty and good intentions of the ruling Samoza family. I didn’t have a scar on my face, either, can you imagine?
“I enrolled in a training program conducted in the United States, so Lucia and I went to your country, eventually staying beyond the basic program so I might complete my business degree. All in all, we were in The States for almost three years and in that time, the situation in Nicaragua deteriorated from bad to explosive. What used to be street demonstrations became riots, strikes crippled the economy, and there were killings, kidnappings and reprisals on both sides. In a move to reestablish civil order, the Guardia Nacional effectively absorbed local police departments. I was delighted when I heard the news, certain that the country would soon stabilize. I couldn’t wait to return, that I might be in on the excitement before it was over. Well, I got my wish and, in May of ‘75, I returned from the US, a snappy young Guardia Nacional captain. What a fool I was! I was actually comfortable in my idealistic certainty that the Sandinista movement’s leadership was an evil cult of subversives and foreign communists, like the government claimed. I further believed that the salvation of the country was in our hands and we represented the people of Nicaragua.”
“Okay, I get the idea: the valiant young man!” She chuckled, he frowned. She returned the frown defiantly, but he averted his gaze and continued.
“No, I was a young father with a precious two year old daughter, Lucia was pregnant again, and I believed in what I was doing. I felt good about it. However, from that point, things went downhill rapidly, and that coincides with meeting your
‘perfect gentleman’. Military intelligence had been my field of study, so I was posted at Guardia headquarters as liaison officer between certain special units of military police and the Managua Municipal Police. These ‘special forces’ assisted in interrogating captured FSLN organizers and foreign agitators. I think now that it was structured that way to create an impossible trail for anyone attempting to locate missing persons, even if access was gained to police or military records.
Anyhow, unprecedented powers had been granted to these groups: they were no longer burdened by the necessity of observing the civil rights of citizens suspected of treason. In cases of acts of sedition by foreigners, notification of consul was also suspended. Nicaragua had been pushed to the wall and no longer was able to handle subversives with kid gloves. I, like the rest, believed that the survival of the country was at stake and these actions were necessary: foreign agitators with the help of treasonous Nicaraguans were funneling weapons into the hands of the protestors, providing para-military training, false documents, and printing revolutionary propaganda. Our orders were to stop their printing presses, break up the protests and bring the organizers to justice – or kill them: it didn’t matter any longer, but time did. If Nicaragua hoped to survive, agitators privy to critical information could no longer hide behind legal maneuvers.
“My assignment had come through while I was still in the US and, yes, I suspected that some of the rumors of torture must be true, exaggerated but true. Nevertheless, I wasn’t prepared for the realities of that morning when I met your friend. It was my first day of duty and I was wearing a new tailor-made uniform, meeting officers of the various units I would be working with, when I was brought to a basement interrogation room below a police precinct. John Sinclair was there, working a prisoner. Luckily, there was a chair next to me because I felt the blood drain from my face, and a cold sweat on my brow.
My knees were reduced to rubber. I tried to appear to be sitting casually while, in reality, I was fighting for composure, because polite introductions were being offered between the moans and gasps of a man whose fingers were being
systematically crushed in a vise. Sinclair was the man operating it and he was smiling. Before offering his hand to shake, he had to wipe blood from it. “Oh, I’d been through all the training! I had learned how to interrogate a suspect with intimidation and the application of some force, slaps, dunking heads in water or slaps in the face or sharp jab to the solar plexus and I can remember fighting my conscience over the idea of using any of them.
Recurring visions of the scene I encountered in the basement of that police station, complete with moans, were to haunt my dreams for weeks. I’d awake with goose flesh and have to fight nausea. I didn’t dare tell Lucia anything about it.
She treated me for flu and demanded that I call in sick. The other officers seemed not to be bothered by any of it and I felt inadequate for my weakness, so I battled not to think of the fate awaiting those unwilling to talk. Eventually, I was able to block such visions from my thoughts, primarily by having my visits to the ‘chambers’ as we called them, be as infrequent and brief as possible.
“Many of the officers in my unit were interrogators and among them, John Sinclair was legendary. He never allowed regular interrogating officers to handle his subjects. He had his own methods and he always got results, or the prisoner died.
Even I had to admit the man was effective, weird, but effective. His exploits in the ‘chambers’ were the topic of unimaginable office horror stories, all enviously related in boisterous tones. Sinclair could show up anywhere, because he was the American CIA agent to be called in for particularly sensitive situations that involved the movement of communist military hardware. I had to liaison with him so I couldn’t avoid him entirely, besides, I was continually hearing of his latest ingenuity for mutilation.
He wouldn’t use our information, but came with his own intelligence files and questions, which he wouldn’t share with our office, claiming it sensitive to American Intelligence. By nothing more than simple bad luck, it befell me to be the one to have to meet with him after a questioning, to keep our office abreast of the latest intelligence. It was a job I did not relish. Anyone could see that he was a sick bastard, who actually enjoyed what he did. I would meet with him after an interrogation at a certain hotel bar. Several times, he walked in with blood splattered across his face wearing his stupid hat and starched western-style shirt. He’d order a beer, in English, with that East Texas twang of his, smiling as though everything was wonderful.
“He’s still an ugly bastard, but then he was worse than ugly: he looked as weird and scary as he actually was. His hair was as white then as it is today, but it hung almost to his waist. He used to keep it tied at the back in a long ponytail.
Circulating through the rumor mill were countless stories about the psychological effect of that white hair and his blotchy-pink complexion. The worst, though, were those icy-blue eyes of his. The guards were con