That same morning, a warm spring morning, Snow met Guillermo for coffee at Mocca’s, a popular sidewalk café on the Avenida with a façade of tinted windows and heavy glass doors. Snow did not make friends easily. A serial manipulator, he mistrusted the validity of his emotional investments in other people and as a consequence he mistrusted the people as well – yet if forced to characterize his relationship with Guillermo, he would have said they were friends. In addition to feeling comfortable around Guillermo, he envied his openness, his ability to discuss freely every aspect of his life, and thus their Sunday meetings had become a semi-regular occurrence. They sat in the shade of an umbrella that sprouted from the center of their table, emblazoned with a Flor de Cana logo, one among several dozen identical tables from which arose the laughter and chatter of over a hundred upper class Temalaguans. The traffic stream was less heavy and less clamorous than usual, and the smell of coffee contended with that of gasoline fumes. Waiters in red T-shirts and dark slacks glided about, bearing trays loaded with food and drink, and chased off beggars who had infiltrated the tables, where they were being pointedly ignored by people so at variance in aspect from themselves, so well nourished, richly dressed, bedecked with gold, jewelry, and expensive sunglasses, they might have been of a different taxonomic order, sparrows among peacocks.
Guillermo dominated the conversation, commenting cattily on the scene, pointing to this or that local celebrity, tossing out bits of gossip, but when Snow showed him the photograph of Hernan Ortiz he had clipped from the newspaper and inquired about the man’s connection with Yara, Guillermo’s airy mood dissolved. He covered the photo with a napkin and said, ‘What is it with you? You live with this girl a few months, you leave her, and now, years later, when she’s dead, you want to know everything about her.’
‘Curiosity,’ said Snow. ‘The road not traveled and all that.’
‘Get yourself another hobby. This one could get you killed.’
‘Did you know Ortiz? Back in the day, I mean?’
Guillermo made an exasperated noise.
‘Come on, man,’ said Snow. ‘You knew everyone on the Avenida in those days.’
‘Yes, I knew him. He was a punk. He used to run with a gang who hung around the bus station. They ripped off street vendors returning home at night to their villages. They’d beat the hell out of them for a few quetzales. They beat the hell out of people like me for fun. A couple of years later he turned up looking clean and presentable, working at the electronics store. Word was he’d joined up with a big organization . . . but he was still a punk.’
‘A big organization? The PVO?’
‘Keep your voice down!’ As Guillermo sipped his coffee, he darted his eyes left and right. ‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I’m telling you now.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me when I first got back? Or when I got involved with Yara?’
‘The PVO’ (Guillermo whispered the acronym) ‘weren’t that big a deal when you hooked up with Yara. It didn’t occur to me to tell you then. When you returned, well, call me sentimental, but I don’t want to see you dead.’ He dabbed at his lips with a napkin. ‘The reason I’m telling you now is to stop you from pursuing the matter. If you keep it up you’re going to make the acquaintance of some very unpleasant people and stir up a lot of trouble for your friends.’
‘Yeah, you keep saying that, but nothing ever happens.’
A weary-looking Indian woman with an infant in one arm, clad in a dress gone gray from repeated scrubbings, its printed pattern all but worn away, stopped by an adjoining table and dangled four or five necklaces in the face of a man with chiseled features, wearing aviator sunglasses and a crisp, pale yellow guayabera. He looked off to his left, surveying the tables, and his companion, a pretty woman with a café-con-leche complexion, carmine lips, and rhinestone-studded sunglasses, exhaled a jet of cigarette smoke and said something that made him smile.
‘For your lady,’ said the Indian woman, gently shaking the necklaces, an enticement. Her voice barely audible, she murmured a litany of afflictions – the child was sick, they were hungry, they needed money to return home.
The Indian woman noticed Snow was watching and moved toward him, an ounce of energy enlivening her face on having spotted an American. Guillermo looked away, but Snow, before the woman could begin her pitch, gave her ten quetzales, at least twice what she could have asked for, and selected one of the necklaces, a piece of poor quality jade upon which the design of a bird had been scratched, strung on a loop of black twine.
‘Why do you encourage them?’ asked Guillermo as the woman hurried off, a few paces ahead of a grim-faced waiter intent on evicting her.
