January Justice Read Online Free Page B

order.”
    “Yes, of course she is guilty of the crime. We do not disagree. We only say she is not one of us, and she has never been one of us, so she did not kidnap Doña Elena or kill Toledo on our behalf.”
    “Okay. If your reasons are so honorable, tell me why you’re using this Mr. Brown alias.”
    “It is said the war is over in my country, Mr. Cutter, but it has only slipped beneath the surface, as your cold war with the Soviets once did. As a leader of my party, I remain a target. There have been three attempts on my life in the past two years alone. And if our enemies among the military junta knew that I was here, they would stop at nothing to prevent me from succeeding in my mission. It is they who have provided asylum to the drug traffickers, you see. That is why we need that money from your war on drugs. We are still fighting for the life of Guatemala, and it is still a fight to the death. So I am forced to hide my presence here, as I am forced to hide most of the time in my own country.”
    The poor sick woman down the street had stopped harassing the two men in the black Suburban and was now sifting through a trash can near their front bumper.
    Watching her I said, “All right. I’ve been having a little trouble concentrating lately, so let me make sure I have this straight. The Delarosa woman kidnapped Doña Elena before she was a big movie star and murdered Doña Elena’s first husband, Arturo Toledo, who was some kind of war criminal, in your opinion. You say Delarosa was only pretending to do it for the URNG. That didn’t bother you much until Doña Elena married a congressman who got his feelings hurt because he thinks your group mistreated his new wife. Now he’s threatening to withhold foreign aid to your political party in Guatemala. You think maybe you can get the congressman off your back by proving Alejandra Delarosa had nothing to do with the URNG. You tried to get the police to help, and when that didn’t work, you thought of me.”
    Vega drew himself up, or tried to draw himself up, to look down his nose at me. It wasn’t easy, since he was quite short. He said, “You make it all sound very trivial, Mr. Cutter, but this is a matter of justice. The Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca has been falsely implicated. We did nothing to Doña Elena, and we did not kill the criminal Toledo, although of course he did deserve to die.”
    I flicked my fingers just a little, waving his statement away. “Maybe so. Maybe not. Either way, I can’t help you.”
    Vega seemed to shrink as quickly as he had drawn himself up. “Please, Mr. Cutter. Ours is a poor country, and our movement is a movement of the people. But we can offer you twenty thousand dollars.”
    “You’d be wasting your money. There’s nothing I could do that wasn’t done already by the police seven years ago when the evidence was fresh.”
    “But as I said, they were focused on capturing the kidnapper, Alejandra Delarosa. They were not interested in proving that she has no connection to the URNG. Your questions will be different.”
    “I have other commitments.”
    “Surely not, since you were just released from the hospital.” He cocked his head slightly, looking at me as though the distance between us was much greater than it was. I looked back at him, not liking how much he seemed to know about me. He continued, “There is also your last client to consider. Can you truly have so much business after making a mistake like that?”
    I felt the swirling distance rise behind my eyelids. The numbing unreality. I tried to remember the sessions, the advice from the professionals in lab coats. Focus on the truth you know. Be in this world now. Find what’s real and cling to it. I recalled something a marine chaplain had sent me on a get-well card, all the way from Afghanistan: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent