Heart of the World (45 page)

“What's a damn merger got to do with it?”

He hemmed and hawed, and finally told: Bracken, worried he was losing control of the multi-billion-buck company he'd built from scratch, had been actively searching for a major influx of cash. The man had spent money like he was minting it; if he got booted as CEO, he was afraid he'd get caught short, be forced to sell property and investments at a loss. When the man he knew as Drew Naylor, a wealthy Colombian with DEA ties, assured him he had a billionaire buyer for pre-Columbian gold, that he knew exactly where Bracken could find it, that the profit would be astronomical—

Navas had manipulated him, played him. Just like Roldan played me at the end.

I said, “You're telling me Bracken wasn't involved in smuggling cocaine?”

“That's an ongoing investigation. I can't say he and his people are clean. I can't say they didn't destroy fields that had nothing to do with coca. And I can't say Navas didn't use his coke money to buy his way out of prison and set himself up as the kind of guy who'd have a chance to deal with the likes of Bracken, but why would Bracken go for the gold if he had cocaine money coming out his nose?”

“What will happen to him?”

“Depends how the investigation plays out. I can tell you this: He would have been a shoo-in member of the GSC board. He won't be now. We'll make sure of that.”

His voice as relentless as a battering ram, he kept talking. About shaky funding for the Witness Protection Program. About the reputation of the DEA. About the importance of maintaining strategic links between government and the business community.

But the goddamn policy, I said, the lack of oversight.

But your license to work as a PI, he countered.

Aquí, no pasa nada
.

“Let's go home,” Mooney said, when he and Paolina returned laden with plastic-wrapped sandwiches. “Hey, it'll be all right.”
Sure. Nothing happens here. It'll be all right
.

On the Delta flight to Boston, Paolina, squashed into the middle seat between Mooney and me, interacted briefly with the stewardess, managing to mutter a request for a Pepsi.

“Hey,” I said softly as I passed the plastic cup, rattling the ice cubes, “watch the bubbles.”

“They go right up your—” she whispered automatically.

“Nose,” I said, finishing a ritual prompted by an early encounter with carbonation. The exchange must have warmed up her vocal chords.

“It's all my fault.” Her voice cracked as she spoke. It sounded rusty, a low and painful moan. She didn't face me, but she didn't turn to Mooney. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead as though staring at something
only she could see, maybe imagining the crosshatched screen of a confessional. “If I hadn't gotten into the white van. If only I hadn't—”

“Look at me, Paolina.” I tilted her chin with my hand, so I could see into her dark, red-rimmed eyes. I spoke slowly and deliberately, as though she was hard of hearing and needed to lip-read to follow the words. “Look at me. Listen to me. This was a professional job. If you hadn't gotten into the van, they would have snatched you off the street. They were going to get you, no matter what. If not that way, another way. If not that night, another night. You did everything you could do and more. You got away once. You escaped. You were strong and brave and none of this, not one bit, was ever your fault.”

She started crying before I finished speaking, averting her face and disappearing into Mooney's leather jacket. I hoped she'd heard me. I closed my eyes and thought, I'll keep on telling her, telling her till she's ready to hear. When I opened my eyes, she was asleep, breathing regularly, snuggled under Mooney's left shoulder.

He winked at me and I thought,
He hates to fly. He hates to fly. He works so hard. He hasn't taken a vacation in years
.

I swallowed and tried to make my lips form a smile. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have learned Ana's name. If it weren't for him, Sam would be in jail.

“Thanks,” I said.

“De nada.”
It's nothing. The polite Spanish reply, diminishing the service rendered. If Paolina hadn't already been asleep on his shoulder, I'd have been tempted to rest my head there, to breathe in his familiar, reliable smell, to let the tension seep from my shoulders, to finally sleep.

The three of us flew into Logan on a night so cold the Cartagena sun might have beaten down on another planet. Paolina clutched the gold birdman in her hand.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Alan Ereira's excellent book,
The Elder Brothers
, for information concerning the Kogi people and for the Kogi chant used in the prologue. Thanks also to Richard, Sam, my South American family, Sarah Smith, Kelley Ragland, and Gina Maccoby.