4. / Monkey Business
After dinner, Lisiado does a sweep of the house and grounds as twilight descends. He's edgy, rightly so, he thinks. Many men died here two nights ago. He doesn't believe in ghosts - he's far more concerned by the possibility of another incursion.
Although Philomena has worked tirelessly and employed her young helpers to good purpose, there are still stains and bulletholes which can't be eradicated so easily, and two days of unventilated corpses have left a gamy odor downstairs. Upstairs is less severe. The bedrooms are tolerable...with the windows open. As he's prowling through the upstairs, he hears Marisol's voice and sees a light coming through her half-open bedroom door. "It's not fair - you've still got both your parents, and I don't have anyone but my stupid uncles. War."
"One, two, three - ha! Mine!" Ché laughs in triumph. "Maybe we could adopt you, or something. My mom likes you."
"I don't even remember my mother, except from pictures. She was pretty. Someday, I'm going to look like her." Lisiado stands in the hallway listening. Yolanda Fuentes had been magnificent; he hopes if Marisol turns out as good-looking, she'll be smart enough not to carry on an affair under her jealous husband's nose.
"I don't think I ever saw her," says Ché doubtfully. No, thinks his father. Dolores was still pregnant with you when all that went down. He remembers his wife vomiting into the sink after seeing Yolanda with her skull caved-in from the beating Eduardo gave her. Lisiado helped dig the unmarked grave for her unfortunate lover. Officially, Yolanda's death resulted from a fall off a horse, and the...trespasser...simply disappeared.
"I'm gonna look like that." Does Marisol have a picture of her mother? Lisiado hardly remembers what the woman looked like anymore, aside from a mental label, "Much Too Beautiful For Her Own Good".
"You? Nah, you're too skinny."
"Not for long!" Marisol sounds triumphant. "Of course, you're just a kid."
"Besides, she's prettier than you are."
As he enters the room, he sees the flashlight propped up so the mirrored closet doors will amplify its light, and the kids lying on the wall-to-wall shag carpet playing cards. Then he gets close enough to recognize the cards they're playing with, and he frowns. "Where did you get those?" he demands. The children are silent. It's Rogelio's deck, the one with the naked women on it. One or the other of them has been snooping through the worker's quarters. He confiscates the cards, ignoring their protests. "I'll find you another deck of cards tomorrow," he promises, stuffing the deck into his shirt pocket. "Play tic-tac-toe or something."
Going back downstairs, he smiles a little. Kids! He sticks his head into the office off the service corridor where Esteban is doing something on the computer. He must've thrown the switch for the room. "Don't forget to turn that off when you're done," Lisiado cautions him.
"I know," says Esteban. "And I made sure the blinds and the curtains are pulled so the light won't show."
"Okay, I'll be outside." He's tempted to grab one of the Havana cigars from the humidor on Eduardo's desk in the library. Dolores isn't here to scold him for doing damage to his abused lungs...no, there's no Nestor to play backgammon with, and his chest already hurts from the exertion of repeated vomiting and moving bodies. Better for him to get some fresh air and take another quick look around before turning in.
Seating himself on one of the low walls of the terrace, Lisiado fans through the deck. The Three of Hearts has always reminded him of Dolores, except that Three's hair is curlier. As he's thinking that, his cell phone chirps. "Buenas tardes."
"I miss you, sweetheart," says Dolores.
"Ah! I was just thinking of you, too," he answers honestly. "What are you doing?"
"Tidying up the kitchen after supper. Is everything okay there? You had a safe trip?" He's a stone's throw away from a building filled with dead bodies. That doesn't meet his criteria for 'okay', but Dolores doesn't need to know about any of that. She'd have a fit about what her darling baby boy is being exposed to...his grin widens a little more as he glances down at the cards.
"We're fine, no problems. It's good to hear your voice, my little songbird." He pictures her going through her usual evening routine in the big kitchen, wearing nothing more than a scrap of lingerie. The image helps loosen the tension in his chest. Not that she usually dresses sexy outside the bedroom; she's probably wearing one of her practical cotton shifts. She saves her satin and lace for intimate occasions.
"It's not the same here without you," she laments. "Ernesto's been in a very funny mood."
"Oh?" He tucks away the fifty-two señoritas and rises from his perch, stretching. "What kind of mood?" He begins strolling toward the garage as she tells him.
"He's been pacing in his office all day, and every time the phone rings, he grabs it."
That doesn't sound like Ernesto, who usually has Ramirez acting as his lieutenant. "What about Ramirez?" Lisiado is reasonably sure she's in no danger from Ernesto. Dolores has no cause to fear her half-brother. It isn't as if she's ever taken any interest in the running of the organization, she's always been perfectly content to keep house and nothing more.
"He's been gone all day. He just got back a little while ago."
From which Lisiado infers that Ramirez has been setting something up. "I'm glad you called," he tells Dolores. Could Ernesto be planning action against Esteban? Perhaps the Gomez who would be king is not content to wait and see if the invaders return to the compound. He makes sure the garage doors are closed, that their vehicles are out of sight...although the fact that there are no longer any corpses littering the grounds are a tip-off that someone's been here.
"I'm going to be so lonely tonight," she purrs. In his mind's eye, she's lounging on the leopard-print sheets in the Brazilian bordello, red-brown hair tumbling down over her breasts, a pose not unlike Three of Hearts, but more enticing...his lovely wife. He hopes she isn't on the verge of being his lovely widow.