“Where to, gentlemen?” I said after the glass was down.
“North,” said the man who had spoken earlier. Not the pockmarked one; the other one. Mr. Brown, I supposed.
“No particular destination?”
“We were thinking of a visit to your Hollywood. You have possibly heard of the Musso and Frank Grill?”
I smiled and said, “Of course.”
“It is a place where famous movies stars are seen?”
“Sometimes.”
“Good. Then we will go there.”
“Yes, sir.”
As we followed the driveway to the street, I touched the button again. Before the glass closed completely, the man said, “Leave it open, please.”
“All right,” I said.
“We might need to ask you something.”
“Certainly.”
We were on the 405 rolling north before he spoke again. “You are Malcolm Cutter?”
“That’s right.”
“The gunnery sergeant, Malcolm Cutter?”
I looked in the rearview mirror. “I haven’t been a sergeant for some time.”
“In the United States Marines.”
I stared at him a little longer. So it wasn’t Geronimo he reminded me of after all. I said, “Where was it? Guatemala?”
He nodded.
Speaking Spanish, the man next to him said, “I tell you, we cannot trust him.”
“Idiot,” replied the one called Mr. Brown, also speaking Spanish. “He can understand us.”
“That is true,” I said, also in Spanish.
“Please forgive my friend,” continued Mr. Brown in his native language. “He finds it difficult to believe Americans can be trusted.”
“Sadly,” I said, “I must admit not all of us are trustworthy.”
“Do you remember me?”
“I think so. It was Chiquimula, was it not?”
“Chiquimulilla.”
“My apologies.”
The man in the mirror shrugged. “A common mistake.”
I changed lanes to avoid a dump truck trickling gravel onto the freeway up ahead. I gently pressed on the accelerator, gradually increasing speed. In the mirror I saw the bouncing pebbles hit a black Chevrolet Suburban. The Suburban swerved and ended up in the lane behind me.
I thought about my time in Chiquimulilla. There had been a clearing at the edge of the mangroves that line the Rio Los Esclavos, just north of town. In the center of the clearing was a long depression in the soil, perhaps one hundred feet by ten. In the depression, underneath the soggy soil, had been about two hundred bodies.
“If it was Chiquimulilla,” I said, “then you must have been with the URNG.”
“Yes.”
“Comandante Valentín Vega, was it not?”
“That was a long time ago. You have a good memory.”
The Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, or Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit, was an unlikely combination of organizations, Marxist rebel groups, and liberation theology Catholics. Each group had been too small and poorly organized to have much effect on the Guatemalan military individually, so they had banded together with the support of the Sandinistas and the Cubans.
On my first deployment to Guatemala, back in 1996, I had been a corporal in a squad that briefly encountered about twenty URNG guerrillas in a jungle clearing. Valentín Vega, the man in the backseat, had been there. It had been a green-ops mission, covert intelligence gathering only, during the final year of Guatemala’s bloody civil war. Although the Marine Corps and I parted later on decidedly uneasy terms, I still couldn’t discuss a mission that had been conducted without the knowledge or consent of the Guatemalan government. I decided to change the subject.
Still speaking Spanish, I looked into the rearview mirror again. “I do not recognize your unhappy friend.”
“You may call him Fidel. Or Castro.”
I was amused.
Vega apparently saw my smile in the mirror. “It is not the name his parents gave him. He chose it to honor Comrade Castro.”
“I am sure your friend has made all of Cuba proud.”
“It would be better if you did not mock Fidel.”
In the mirror I saw Fidel Castro’s namesake twist in his seat and reach behind his back. Since he didn’t appear to be scratching an itch, I assumed he had removed his handgun from its holster. Or maybe I was imagining things again. It was hard to tell the difference. But the better part of valor is discretion, so I decided to accelerate a little more.
Comandante Valentín said, “It is an honorable name.”
“In certain circles, I suppose. Not in mine.”
“Seriously. You should use more care in your choice of words.”
“You do realize I am going ninety-five? about a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour.”
“Perhaps it is too fast.”
“Perhaps. But it also makes it inconvenient for Señor Castro to fire his weapon.”
“Shooting you would not be inconvenient,” said Señor Castro.
“In that case,” I said, “I will drive a little faster.”
I took us up to one hundred and ten miles per hour. It involved a lot of rapid lane changes, but somehow I found enough holes in the traffic to keep going, which was a minor miracle in LA at that time of day. The signs and barricades and other vehicles left long trails of color as they flashed past on either side. I was pretty sure the trails of color were not real.
“Please,” said Vega. “This is not necessary.”
“Neither is Señor Castro’s weapon.”
“He will replace it in his holster.”
“If you do not mind…” —I swerved to avoid a beer truck in the lane ahead—“I would prefer he dropped it on the seat up here beside me. Yours, too.”
Vega sighed and turned to look out the window at his shoulder. “Do it,” he said.
Castro made no move.
“Do what he said, Fidel,” Vega repeated.
I glanced into Castro’s yellow eyes in the rearview mirror. Then I had to pay attention to the traffic up ahead. The glance had been enough to confirm my earlier suspicion about the man’s hatred. It isn’t paranoia when it’s true. I focused on what I knew to be true.
I cut left into the HOV lane to pass three cars, and then back to the right to barely miss the rear bumper of a van we were approaching fast. The van honked as we roared by. It sounded distant in the heavily insulated cocoon of the Mercedes’ interior. I could barely hear the engine, and there was only a hint of wind noise. By virtue of impeccable design, the outside world had almost no effect on my passengers in the Mercedes. But I had modified the suspension personally, so my sense of contact with the road was excellent. Even at one hundred ten miles per hour, the limo handled as well as some sports cars. Still, it would only take one driver changing lanes without warning, and we’d be finished. I didn’t enjoy putting the other drivers in danger.
I was hoping for a patrol car or a CHP motorcycle in the rearview mirror, when Valentín Vega’s hand appeared in my peripheral vision. A Glock 26 dropped onto the leather seat beside me. I heard heated whispering in back. After a couple of seconds, another pistol joined the Glock, also a 26, the smaller size, convenient for concealed carry.
I removed my foot from the accelerator and touched the window button.
As the glass began to rise between us, Vega said, “Please leave it down. We did as you suggested.”
“Your friend Señor Castro might have a knife.”
“He does not.”
“In that case, he might try to stare me to death.”
“But we must talk.”
“Do not worry. I will leave it open just a little.”
When the gap at the top of the glass was too small for them to reach me, I touched the button again to stop the window. “All right,” I said. “Please explain why Señor Castro felt he had to draw his weapon.”