About unusual movements of wind charted off the coast of Africa.
About controversial data predicting the probability of earthquakes measuring over 5.5 Richter.
American, the pool boy had said when she tipped him the first day with an American dollar. Whole lot of Americans coming in.
Really, she had said, by way of closing the conversation.
Good for business, he had said, by way of reopening it.
She had looked around the empty pool, the unused chaises stacked against the shack. I guess they don’t swim much, she had said.
He had giggled and slapped his thigh with a towel. Do not swim much, he said finally. No.
By the third day she had herself begun noticing the Americans. Several in the coffee shop the night before, all men. Several more in the lobby, laughing together as they stood at the entrance waiting to get into an unmarked armored van.
The van had CD plates.
Swear to Christ, that deal in Chalatenango, I did something like three and a half full clips, one of the Americans had said.
Shit, another had said. You know the difference between one of them and a vampire? You drive a stake through a vampire’s heart, the fucker dies.
No Americans at the pool.
Until now.
She had become aware as she was reading the local paper that one of the men she had seen waiting to get into the van with the CD plates was standing between her chaise and the pool, blocking the tiled walkway, smoking a cigarette as he surveyed the otherwise empty pool area.
His back was to her.
His warm-up jacket was lettered 25TH DIVISION TROPIC LIGHTNING.
She realized that she was reading for the third time the same follow-up on a rash of thefts and carjackings in the immediate vicinity of Cyril E. King International Airport on St. Thomas.
Excuse me, she said. Do you know what time it is.
He flicked his cigarette in the direction of the clock over the pool shack counter.
The clock read 1:10.
She put down the local paper and picked up the Miami Herald.
She continued reading the Miami Herald until she reached page sixteen of the B section.
Page sixteen of the B section of the July 2 Miami Herald, two days late.
McMAHON, Richard Allen: age 74, died under care of physician June 30, 1984, at Clearview Convalescent Lodge, South Kendall. No services are scheduled.
She folded the newspaper, got up from the chaise and edged her way past the American in the warm-up jacket.
Pardon me, he said. Ma’am.
Excuse me, she said.
Outside the hotel she got a taxi and told the driver to take her to the American embassy. The “little business” (as she thought of it) at the main embassy gate took ten minutes. The “kind of spooky coincidence” (as she thought of it) or “incident” (as it immediately became known) at the embassy picnic took another ten minutes. When she got back to her room at the Intercon at approximately two-thirty on the afternoon of July 4 she wrote two letters, one to Catherine and one to Wynn Janklow, which she took to an air express office to be shipped for delivery the next day in the United States. Sweet bird, the letter to Catherine began. She had spoken to Catherine twice from San José and again the evening she arrived on the island but the calls had been unsatisfactory and now she could not reach her.
Tried to call you a few minutes ago but you had signed out to go to Cape Ann with Francie and her parents — didn’t know how to reach you and there are two things I need you to know right away. The first thing I need you to know is that I’m asking your father to pick you up and bring you to Malibu for a while. Just until I get back from this trip. You don’t need summer credits anyway and he can probably arrange a way you can do the S.A.T. prep out there. The second thing I need you to know is I love you. Sometimes we argue about things but I think we both know I only argue because I want your life to be happy and good. Want you not to waste your time. Not to waste your talents. Not to let who you are get mixed up with anybody else’s idea of who you should be.
I love you the most. XXXXXXXX, M.
P.S. If anyone else comes and wants to take you from school for any reason repeat ANY REASON do not repeat DO NOT go with him or her.
The letter to Wynn Janklow was short, because she had reached him, at the house in Malibu, as soon as she got back from the embassy. She had placed the call from a pay phone in the Intercon lobby. Had he not answered the phone she would have waited in the lobby until he did, because she needed to talk to Wynn before chancing any situation (the elevator, say, or the corridor upstairs) in which she might be alone.
Any situation in which something might happen to prevent her from telling Wynn what it was she wanted him to do.
Wynn had answered the phone.
Wynn had told her that he had just walked in off a flight from Taipei.
She had told Wynn what it was she wanted him to do.
She had not mentioned the kind of spooky coincidence at the embassy picnic.
My understanding is that Dick McMahon will not be a problem, she had heard the familiar but unplaceable voice say at the embassy picnic.
The steel band that was playing Sousa marches had momentarily fallen silent and the familiar but unplaceable voice had carried across the tent.
Deek McMaa-aan was the way the familiar voice pronounced the name. My understanding is that Deek McMaa-aan will not be a problem.
She had not placed the voice until she saw the Salvadoran across the tent.
Here is my concern, she remembered the Salvadoran saying in the Pan Am lounge at the Miami airport as he fingered the envelope Barry Sedlow had slipped him. We have a little problem here.
Transit passenger, she remembered Barry Sedlow saying in the car just after he shot out the streetlight with the 9mm Browning. Already on the six-thirty back to San Sal. Not our deal.
The Salvadoran was the kind of spooky coincidence.
The Salvadoran was why she called Wynn.
The Salvadoran was why she tried to call Catherine.
The Salvadoran was why she wrote the letters and took them to the air express office for next-day delivery to Catherine and to Wynn.
The Salvadoran was why she went from the air express office to a local office of the Bank of America, where she obtained eleven thousand dollars in cash, the sum of the cash available on Elena McMahon’s various credit cards.
The Salvadoran was why she then destroyed the cards.
My understanding is that Dick McMahon will not be a problem.
Not our deal, Barry Sedlow had said, but it was.
She wrote the letters and she arranged for Wynn to take care of Catherine and she got the eleven thousand dollars in cash and she destroyed the credit cards because she had no way of knowing what kind of problem Dick McMahon’s daughter might be seen to be.
Half a generation after the fact, from where I sit at my desk in an apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan, it would be easy to conclude that Elena’s actions that afternoon did not entirely make sense, easy to assume that at some point in the hour between learning her father was dead and seeing the Salvadoran she had cracked, panicked, gone feral, a trapped animal trying to hide her young and stay alert in the wild, awake in the ether, alive on the ground.