The Cain File (6 page)

The booming of church bells filled the plaza and beyond. Nine a.m. Time was running out.

Then, amidst the creaking stream of traffic, the polite tap of a car horn caught her attention. The white Ford sedan—the same one she’d encountered a couple of hours ago. The same pudgy Nordic man exploring her with his eyes, magnified by glasses. He pulled over.

She hurried over as the passenger window rolled down.

“I thought you’d gone,” he said with a trace of relief. His English was stiff and halting.

“I was waiting for you,” she said in deliberately accented English, yanking open the car door and hopping in. She pulled the door shut before he could change his mind or anyone could spot her. She gave him a sly sideways smile and took in a deep breath and puffed her chest out. “I was hoping you’d come back.”

His attentive eyes were immediately drawn toward her constricted cleavage.

A horn honked behind them:
shave and a haircut.
Her new partner released a taut smile and they lurched out into traffic. Although he had to concentrate on cars mere inches apart, he kept stealing glances at her. “Do you live nearby?”

“We can’t go there,” she said. “My mother . . .”

“Can’t you ask her to go out for a little while?”

“There are my brothers and sisters. You really don’t want to go to the part of town where I live, anyway. Why not your hotel?”

“Can’t we just go park somewhere? Surely you must know a place.”

“At this hour? There’s no privacy.” She gave him her best
come-hither
look. “Don’t you want to
relax
properly? At your hotel? Hmm?”

“Yes, of course . . .” He eyed her T-shirt, dirty jeans and Keds. His temples pulsed. “It’s just that . . . I’m not sure the Hilton . . .”

. . . Wanted low-rent street hookers at nine in the morning? Whyever not?

“Who cares?” She gave him an animal stare. “What about what
you
want?”

He took a deep breath as he tried to focus on the truck directly in front belching fumes. “I’m worried my fellow conference attendees might see us. I have to give a talk at eleven this morning, you see.”

But he obviously wasn’t
that
worried. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. And he had taken foolish risks. Picking up a street hooker in one of the iffier cities in Latin America. He hadn’t even asked for a price.

“Maybe we should just say
adiós,
then,
”
she said. “What a shame. I
was
in the mood to get to know you better. Loosen you up for your conference. Oh well. Can you stop here, please?” Maggie reached for the door handle.

“Wait!” He chewed his lip as he blinked rapidly behind his glasses. “You think it will be okay? Going through the hotel lobby, I mean?”

“Absolutely.”

The car reeled into the grand Plaza de la Independencia, its neat white classical government buildings softened by tall palms in the elegant square. At the other end of the plaza stood an Indian woman wearing a fedora, with a baby slung over her back in a blanket similar to the one Maggie’s laptop was in. She was hawking brightly colored shawls out of a cardboard box.

“Pull over there,” Maggie said.

“Why?” he said nervously.

“Just pull over.”

He stopped at the curb. Maggie rolled the window down, caught the woman’s attention. “Something not too garish,” she said.

The woman adjusted the baby on her back as she searched her box and produced a smart-looking gray-and-black hound’s-tooth checked shawl. She held up the neatly folded wrap, letting it unfurl with a bit of panache. The finest polyester China could produce.

“
Buenazo,”
Maggie said.
“I’ll take it.”

The woman’s mouth parted in surprise. Maggie wasn’t even going to haggle. “Five dollars?”

Maggie took the garment, turned to her new beau. “I need five dollars.”

He looked taken aback, but produced a ten-dollar bill quickly enough. Maggie handed it to the woman. “Keep the change.” They set off, Maggie modeling her new shawl.

“Better?” she said. “A little more grown up? For your hotel lobby?”

“Yes!” He gave an unctuous smile as he pushed his glasses up his shiny pug nose. They headed over a hill into downtown traffic. “You know, you don’t seem like a local.”

“Is that what you want? A local girl? An Indian girl?” She ran a finger up his plump thigh. “One who is grateful? One who will do
anything
? I am grateful. You’ll see.”

He gulped as he drove, his hands shaking visibly as they gripped the wheel. “What’s your name?”

“Suwa.”

“What a beautiful name! It’s Indian, is it?”

“Yes.” It was also the Quechua word for thief.

“Indian girls are beautiful.”

“Well, thank you,” she said. “And what’s your name?”

“Ulfric.”

“Ulfric,” Maggie said, pronouncing it carefully. “Such a strong name.”

“Umm . . . we haven’t discussed . . .” He couldn’t seem to finish his sentence.

“Discussed what, Ulfric?”

“Um . . . how much . . .”

She sat back, wrapping the shawl around her coyly. “What do you think I am—some girl who does these things for
money
? I’m just desperate to buy food for my brothers and sisters. I only ask that if you are pleased with me, that, when we are done, when you are satisfied, of course, that you give me a gift. Forty dollars.”

“
Forty
?” His voice rose. “Isn’t that a lot of money down here?”

“It’s not
that
much.”

“Twenty.” He nodded as he drove. “Twenty is plenty. Don’t try to take advantage of my good nature.”

“Twenty, then. Whatever you have.” Twenty was just the start.

He cleared his throat and drove. “Indian girls are beautiful.”

“Yes we are,” she said. “And we’ll do anything.”

Anything.

“What a view,” Maggie said. Ecuador’s long narrow capital stretched out from the hotel window, stories below.

“I have to give a talk in less than two hours,” Ulfric said, his voice still quivering.

Maggie turned from the window. Ulfric, her German, or whatever he was, stood by the table in his corporate cookie-cutter hotel room. His laptop was out on the table, binders were open, pages of notes scribbled over in red were scattered here and there.

“I thought you could hop in the tub,” Maggie said. “Hmm?”

“But my talk. We need to hurry.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be quick.” She peeled off her wrap, threw it on the back of the chair. “But not too quick, eh?” Then she pulled off her sequined T-shirt slowly and languorously, revealing her firm torso in lacy black bra. “I’m going to have you nice and unperturbed for your lecture.”

“How do you know a word like . . .” He pushed his glasses up his nose again as if to get a better look. Her breasts caught his eyes like magnets.

“How about a drink?” she said.

“A
drink
?” A little screech in his voice. “It’s not even ten in the morning. Tea. I’ll have tea. It’s over there.”

“Tea, then,” she said, noting the coffee maker and materials on the nightstand by his bed. She also saw some questionable reading material: a shiny paperback with a teenage girl on the cover in bra and panties. A hotel bottle of hand lotion and a box of paper tissues sat next to it. “I’ll make you some tea while you get in the tub,” she said, kicking off her black Keds and peeling off her blue jeans. Down to her underwear, she grabbed the coffee pot, darted into the bathroom, turned on the taps to the Jacuzzi bathtub. She filled the pot partway with water from the sink and dimmed the bathroom lights on her way out.

Ulfric stood puffing as he watched her make tea. He was probably wondering how an Indian girl got hold of such classy underwear, she thought. At least her lingerie seemed to be occupying his thoughts. “Sugar. I like plenty of sugar.”

“Go on! Into the tub with you. I’ll bring it in.”

“Right,” he said, turning like a robot and heading into the bathroom. “Right.” The door shut behind him. She heard him sneeze.

Maggie removed the filter from the coffee maker and fired it up, making hot water. She heard Ulfric getting into the bathtub, splashing. He started humming a German tune.

She made a paper cup of tea and while it seeped, she tapped quietly on the keyboard to Ulfric’s laptop. His screensaver appeared and prompted her for a password. She picked up the cell phone lying on the table. It required a security gesture to get in. She set it down quietly, retrieved the packet she had gotten from Kacha from her jeans. She opened the paper slowly, so as not to touch or spill any of the white powder. There was perhaps a half-teaspoon. A lot, it seemed.

“Suwa?” Ulfric said in a theatrical whisper from the bathroom. “It’s getting late!”

She dumped all of the Devil’s Breath into the cup and stirred it with a plastic spoon. She added two packs of sugar, mixed that in too.

She pushed open the bathroom door with her foot and entered.

He was sitting in the tub, naked, his glasses off, looking at her with his mouth agape. His clothes lay in a pile on the floor. She held up the spiked tea.

“Plenty of sugar,” she said. “You’ll need your energy.” She winked.

“
Ja
,” he said, pawing at her leg with a wet mitt. “Come here!” He swiped at her breast as she bent over to put the cup down next to him. She had to maneuver so she didn’t spill any tea.

“Hey! Go easy, Ulfric.”

“Indian girls have big ones.”

“Drink your tea.”

He picked up his cup, toasted her, giving her an evil little grin. “
Skol!
”

“Come on,” she said, picking up a bar of soap, unwrapping it, as she sat on the rim of the tub. “I suspect you need a bit of a rubdown.”

“Yes.” Laughing like a schoolboy, he gulped tea. “Rub me down like a good girl.”

She stood up. “I’m just going next door to slip out of my underwear. I don’t want to get them wet. Any wetter than they already are, hey?” She gave him an evil glint.

“Hurry back!” he said, slurping his tea. “I’m really excited, you know.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

She went into the bedroom, shut the door, picked up her jeans and T-shirt, and dressed quietly.

“
Messtechnik
?” Maggie said, sitting at Ulfric’s laptop. “And how do I spell that?

“
M-e-s-s-t-e-c-h-n-i-k.
” Ulfric stood in the middle of the hotel room wearing nothing but a towel, dripping on the carpet, rubbing his bulging white stomach absent-mindedly as he stared at the wall with wide, unfocused eyes.

Maggie typed the recited letters into the password field of his laptop and was granted access. The desktop screen showed a mousey Asian woman with a forced smile, partially hidden behind two overweight preteen Nordic boys. So Ulfric had a mail-order bride. She probably doubled as his maid, nanny, cook, and whatever else he demanded.

Maggie fired up the email program. “Same password for email, Ulfric?”

“Messtechnik,” he repeated in a monotone, blinking at the wall.

Maggie typed in the password, waited for his email to connect and download.

From Ulfric’s email account, Maggie fired off an email to a clandestine account Ed had set up, giving him Ulfric’s cell number and the phrase:
the next time you think you have power and influence, try ordering someone else’s dog around
. It was one of Ed’s favorite quotes and he would know who had sent the email. She hit
Send
, then went to Ulfric’s
Sent Items
folder, where she deleted the sent copy of the email, for whatever security was in it.

Ulfric stood staring at the wall in his towel.

“Ulfric,” Maggie said. “I have a few more questions for you.”

“Yes?”

Within minutes Maggie had access to Ulfric’s cell phone and hotel safe. Soon she had four hundred euros, several hundred U.S. dollars—the base currency in Ecuador—and a German passport. “Ulfric, where’s your wallet?”

“Under the mattress.”

The wallet contained seven dollars, an ATM card, and several credit cards. Another jackpot.

She left Ulfric the seven dollars and slid the wallet back under the mattress.

While she waited for Ed to call, Maggie nudged Ulfric over to the bed where she sat him down like a stoned Teddy Bear and continued to question him. Eyes open wide, twiddling his pudgy toes, he answered like a dutiful child, one with a German accent. She jotted down his pin and access numbers on a pad of hotel notepaper.

She turned on the TV, found Canal 13, the Quito station. “Las Noticias” was on, the breaking news, a serious man in a tie with a microphone standing in front of the U.S. Embassy she had sailed by not a few hours ago. A collection of police cars flashed behind him. “Police are on the lookup for a young woman, wearing jeans and a purple T-shirt, and an American man with fair hair.”

Reasonable identikits of her and John Rae appeared.

“The two are wanted in connection to a shooting at an event last night in Guapalo. The woman is believed to be the same one who tried to run the barricades this morning at the U.S. embassy, resulting in the death of her driver. She is considered armed and dangerous.”

Maggie
wished
she were armed. And she hadn’t run any barricades.

She switched to TeleAmazonias, the national station. Students were marching in Guayaquil, protesting the agreement with the Chinese to continue oil exploration in the Amazon. Footage showed bulldozers cutting a road of rust-red dirt through pristine rainforest, natives demonstrating there as well. In their painted faces, bare torsos, and native dress, they looked vulnerable and undermanned. Maggie was reminded of Kacha’s cousin, Tica, under arrest somewhere. The red dust blew around the ankles of the demonstrators in swirls. Without the ancient growth to keep it in place, the precious Amazon was blowing away. Maggie shook her head.

But there was nothing on the national news of a runaway Indian girl in jeans and purple T-shirt, wanted for causing havoc in Quito. Yet.

Ulfric’s cell phone rang.

Maggie answered. “Did you order a pizza?”

“What the hell is going on, Maggs?” Ed Linden said.

Street noise in the background. Ed was calling away from the office. Playing it safe.