Teresa Sepúlveda had been a journalist since high school, and now did interviews and story production for TVN in Santiago. A few arrests before 1990, back when journalism was considered treason here. She and Lear divorced during his second 5-year bid. When he wanted to be kind(which was most of the time) Lear said that they began in the same place, but grew to sharp diversions. When he wanted to be cruel(which I only witnessed once) he called her a shellacked little sellout.
“You don’t really expect me to believe you’d paint a mural for a billionaire hosting a Godoy presidential fundraiser,” Teresa said. “You’re against everything he stands for. He wanted to sell the community center for real estate.”
“Hey, we won that one,” Lear said, proud and easy. “If he can let bygones be bygones, so can I.”
I tugged Keiko’s linen sleeve. “Come on,” I whispered, ducking back towards the bike.
“Don’t you wanna hear?”
What I wanted was to not be spotted by someone whose whole entire life consisted of current events. When Keiko leaned to peek through the front facade’s window, I wrapped my fingers around her slim wrist. She looked at me and smirked, and I dropped her wrist in surrender.
“Don’t give me that, Lear.” Teresa’s voice was muffled by the glass. “I know you. You’re up to something.”
“Damn, even his wife calls him Lear?” Keiko muttered.
“I’m trying to work in more official channels. Show I can play nice if I have to. Maybe then you and Andrea would let me visit once and while.”
“Uoohh, he’s a good liar,” Keiko whispered. “No wonder they got divorced.”
“Don’t bring our daughter into this,” Teresa snapped. “If you won’t tell me what this is about, I’ll figure it out on my own. Close up shop on whatever hairbrained scheme you’re cooking up, now, and I’ll consider not reporting it on the national news once I figure it out.” With a snort, Teresa turned, marching for the door.
“Shit!” I squeaked. Keiko and I scrambled around a corner as Teresa breezed out the front door. She leapt into her blue hatchback. I held my breath until it disappeared down the cobblestone hill. “Let’s go in through the back,” I said. “I don’t want Lear to know we were eavesdropping.”
We crunched across gravel to the loading door’s 3-foot high concrete dock. Keiko insisted on clamoring up first, all pointy knees and scraping soles, so she could help me up. There wasn’t much of it to be had. I worried I was going to tug her back down into the lot with me.
“So she’s a news lady here?” Keiko asked, straining.
“Not here,” I huffed, trying to gather some kind of leverage from Keiko’s noodle-arms. “In Santiago. But she’s here a lot, does seminars on journalism at the university.”
“The news don’t pay her enough?”
With minimal scrapes, we managed my way up onto the concrete ledge. “I don’t think it’s about the money,” I puffed. “I think she just likes to help the students out. Future generations. She and Lear are both like that.”
“That so?” Keiko hummed in a way that made me suspicious.
We weaved through the brew vats until we arrived at the paint-spattered picnic table. The crew had accrued a gray projector screen and another chalkboard. Blueprints were plastered up on one. The other was a scrabbly, chalk-white sketch of an elongated figure sprinting through a motley of buildings. A man that could only be Dario was making adjustments.
Something flew at me from the back of the room, embracing me like a professional wrestler. “Oh, my poor little girl!” warbled a woman’s voice. “Captured, held at gunpoint, forced to do all manner of untoward acts, I imagine! You must be horribly traumatized, my little darling!”
Ah. So Lear managed to snag her after all.
Martina Leiva was fifty-six with four divorces under her belt, and if the data out of Vienna was any indication, she was working on a fifth. Born to a prominent family in Spain, she spent her youth moving in Europe's highest echelons. According to Martina and no one else, she was nicknamed the “James Bond debutante,” and claimed to have worked with Great Britain to dismantle the eastern bloc and advance the collapse of the Soviet Union. I attributed most of it to her private-island-sized ego, but she did speak German, and aside from a few financial swindles and questionable divorce settlements, her early history was suspiciously clean. On a past job she showed me a photo of her with David Bowie at his ‘87 concert in West Berlin, which was very badass.
Lear must have relayed the kidnapping incident with Keiko to her. Martina squeezing me like a toothpaste tube was only slightly less traumatizing. “I'm alright, really.”
“If only I had been there, none of this would have happened!” Martina released me to smooth back her sleek, grey-blonde ponytail. She was thin and toned with perfect posture and a pale, foxy face that always looked makeupless, though I knew better. “I can not believe I missed the whole thing. Oh, Domino, my darling, I’m thrilled to be working with you again.”
“Me too, Martina,” I said, and meant it.
“And this, I suppose, is the villain Horatio has thoughtlessly employed into our company?”
Keiko grinned with a closed mouth. “El trabajo es para la villano, si?”
“Indeed, Indeed, Ikegawa-san!” Lear exclaimed as he emerged from the front-of-house. “Everyone been introduced?”
Dario’s arrhythmic, patent-leather gait clicked over to us. “Good afternoon, Ms. Domino,” he said in his lilting, West-Indies British accent. He leaned on his cane to shake Keiko’s hand. “A pleasure.”
You wouldn't know it from his surgically-coiffed appearance, but Dario was a ballistics expert. He was precise in every possible way, down to the antique Rolex on his wrist that he wound religiously every day. His fanaticism for clocks was matched only by his obsession with structural engineering and chemistry. He knew down to the grain how much gunpowder was needed to pop a lock, or demolish a building.
“Lear informed me I missed the festivities,” Dario said. “I hope ignorance accounts for my tardiness.” He produced a long, egg-white box from his jacket pocket, turning it in his hand so he could hand it to me perpendicularly.
“Festivities?”
“Your birthday,” Dario specified.
“Oh! Oh, uh, it wasn’t… I-I mean, you didn’t have to get me anything, Dario.”
“My intentions weren’t entirely altruistic,” Dario confided. “You’ll need it for the job.”
I opened the box. Inside was a sleek women’s wristwatch with a white leather band—terribly elegant, with small dots instead of numerals. “Oh, Dario…” I put it on right away. “Oh, this is too much, thank you, I love it.”
Dario smiled so subtly I might have imagined it. We crowded around the picnic table, drinking coffee and catching up until U.H.’s scratchy laugh echoed off the stainless-steel vessels, heralding their arrival.
Happy Wednesday, y’all! Thanks for reading 🧡
-A