Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,22
for organic coffee thought he looked hot in the Irish tweed hat he always wore and that white apron. The café wouldn’t have any business without his brownies, anyway, so it was a logical choice.
“So, we’ll be back on Monday afternoon, then.” Alejo clasped hands briefly with Lázaro, and swung one of the streamlined North Face backpacks full of supplies they had prepared last night onto his back. “Tuesday we’ll start getting everything ready for the crusade.” Alejo and his team had already picked the spot for the operation against Salazar, a greasy sandwich kiosk in Cochabamba’s market where the man met his old college buddy every second Friday of the month. The street was packed and hemmed in by tall buildings. No one would ever know where the sniper’s bullet had come from.
“Call me with any news,” Alejo instructed half-way out the door, then turned back to snatch another brownie off the table. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“Anytime!” Lázaro called, tipping the brim of his hat to them all. As they left, Alejo could have sworn he saw Lázaro checking his reflection in the bamboo-framed mirror along the wall, flicking off stray bread crumbs with a satisfied smile.
It was 8:30 in the morning on Sunday when Alejo’s sat phone buzzed with a call. The group had just finished a discussion called “Ethical Questions Related to Justice” and were now lounging around debating and munching granola bars for breakfast. He pulled the phone out of the leg pocket of his pants, glancing at the screen for ID.
“Lázaro.” Alejo wandered from the clearing and entered the relative coolness of the forest at the top of the Uchumachi mountain. A thick cloud of mist still hung over the tops of the tangled foliage, not yet burned away by the mid-morning tropical sun.
“Alejo. I’ve got news.” Lázaro’s voice twitched with excitement. “The speaker for the crusade we’ve been planning….he’s down here. I saw him.”
Alejo blinked, suddenly at a loss for words. “Uh, he’s there? In Coroico?” Wasn’t that what Lázaro had just said? “Do you know why?”
“Yeah, you’re going to love this. It appears the guy is some kind of amateur sculptor and he entered that contest here in Coroico this weekend. I saw the guy walk by on the sidewalk this morning, when I was setting up the café. He’s with five staff members, and I followed them over to Henrich’s for breakfast. I got a table close to theirs out on the porch and heard, like, everything they said.” A long, long pause. “He’s going to Thailand again,” Lázaro said. “After her leaves Coroico, the day after tomorrow.”
Alejo clenched his teeth, hard. “Ok, I’m not sure you really want to hear the rest,” Lázaro rambled on, “but you’re going to anyway.” Gabriel appeared next to Alejo and Alejo punched the sat phone’s speaker button since they were away from the others and a thousand feet above Coroico. Lázaro’s voice blared distorted out of the phone’s miniature speakers.
“After they finished breakfast, I took a little stroll through the plaza to check out the sculpture exhibition, which I had not done since I’ve been so darn busy at work this weekend. I found, unfortunately, the statue that S…that the speaker entered in the exhibition and I am just sad that I’m the one who had to see it and be here describing it to you.”
“I need to get back to the group. Can you hurry this up?”
“I’m getting there,” Lázaro insisted crossly. “So the guy made this humongous statue out of white plaster or something. I think it’s supposed to be himself as some great benefactor. He’s got himself sitting on a chair, and then around him are four little boys on the ground, looking at him. There’s an older boy, like maybe twelve, sitting on the guy’s lap. There’s a lot of detail in this thing, so I go closer and see that all the kids have either a little notebook or backpack with their name engraved on it. Like I said, wish you were here.”
Alejo rubbed his temple and spoke before allowing himself to think. “Did any of them say Ruben?”
There was a long pause, and then Lázaro said, cautiously, “Now that’s freaky. How did you know? That’s the kid on the guy’s lap.”
Alejo’s head reeled but he managed to focus, fingers digging into the phone. Rage filled him, and he let it, anything to keep away the tears he really didn’t want Gabriel seeing.
Gabriel leaned against a fat banana plant, visually disturbed.