Angels of Maradona Read online

  ANGELS OF MARADONA

  ANGELS OF MARADONA

  GLEN CARTER

  100 Water Street • P.O. Box 2188 • St. John’s • NL • A1C 6E6

  www.breakwaterbooks.com www.jespersonpublishing.ca

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Carter, Glen, 1957-

  Angels of Maradona / Glen Carter.

  ISBN 978-1-55081-239-8

  I. Title.

  PS8605.A7778A66 2008 C813'.6 C2007-907538-X

  © 2008 Glen Carter

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  We acknowledge the financial support of The Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing activities.

  We acknowledge the support of the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

  Printed in Canada.

  Dedicated to my parents,

  Muriel Baker and the late Walter Carter.

  Et mon fils, Philippe Robichaud.

  As a journalist, I have been telling true and compelling stories

  my entire professional life. This is my first pack of lies.

  Glen Carter, November 23, 2007

  “There is sometimes

  a belief that these

  are demon children,

  that the father is

  some sort of animal.”

  Leigh Minter, Psychologist, U’wa observer

  PROLOGUE

  THE U’WA DECREE 1973.

  JAGUAR FOREST, COLOMBIA.

  They felt like knots of clay hardened within the fires of hell, an abomination which brought in Luis Mendoza a deep, awful dread.

  The old man of Maradona shuffled through the night, stooped in exertion. Farmer’s boots echoed a lopsided beat on hard earth, a pathetic uneven gait which electrified muscles withered long ago. After a second, Mendoza dropped his gaze into cradles formed by his sinewy arms. Two tiny faces there. In shadows. Still sleeping. Mendoza wheezed his thanks, bit at moist air as he lunged through brush as dark as the two little souls.

  After another hundred yards the shriek of a night creature high in the jungle canopy caused him to jolt. Sweating and breathless, the old man twisted his head towards the sound and thought again about the screaming women. So shrill, it felt like a hot blade eviscerating him.

  Momma, Momma, the babies! Momma, Momma, please!

  His own blood. His daughter – the whore. His wife – no better. Her arms flailing, beating at him as he scooped up the children and turned for the door. The stain on his house could not be tolerated, not what the girl had brought into their lives. Not these children.

  Against his bare arms the old man felt the warmth of them, festering heat from something in the process of decaying. Certainly not the flesh of innocents.

  A new noise made him twist backwards. The old man’s eyes widened in panic until he realized it was the pounding of his own heart. Tightness spread across his chest but he knew he could not rest.

  The women had fought like animals to stop him. They were U’wa, yet they refused to understand, to accept. Understand that he had delayed too long already. It was what Serpez had warned that very night and Serpez understood. You risk us all, Mendoza. You know what you must do.

  A tree branch scraped the old man’s face, leaving a thin trail of blood on his brown cheek. He swore aloud, drawing the children tighter. Soon, he thought, hunkering lower to protect his cargo from splintering brush.

  Mendoza had swept aside his guilt. The millennia of his people soothed his conscience, eclipsing his darkest fears. Besides, the curse had already claimed Pinto and his wife. The two of them strong as bulls before being taken by the mysterious sickness. The co-op had lost livestock; a dozen head were down. Then there were the mangos. On many farms the unpicked fruit was black and shriveled. The agriculture man from Bogotá had come, had rambled on about parasites and such, but what did a bureaucrat know about the U’wa ways?

  The two babies were wrapped tightly in thin worn blankets, still in slumber even with the raspy coughs splitting their grandfather’s laboured breaths.

  Five minutes later. Higher in the cloud forest than he imagined he could run, Mendoza halted in a small clearing. Moonlight crowned him. Wolf-like he snarled, wiping a tremulous hand across his bloody face. The elder Serpez had given him specific instructions about what had to be done. Quick instructions, spoken closely, spit like venom into his face.

  Mendoza’s eyes darted around the clearing, relief on his wet face. This would be the place, he decided, and not a moment too soon since he was certain now the babies were coming awake. He bent painfully. Carefully he placed the bundles on the ground, one next to the other. A tiny hand brushed his fingers, causing Mendoza to jerk backward, nearly losing his balance until he caught himself against a nearby tree. Mendoza pulled himself straight, glanced quickly upward, his face glistening with sweat and blood. His lips fluttered. Soundless. Then the old man of Maradona spun around, and without a backward glance, he stumbled into the jungle.

  The babies gurgled contentedly. Their eyes wide with the erratic flight of fireflies in the darkness, they swiveled their heads in tandem to chase the airborne minuet, faces spotted with pinpoints of light from the luminous insects. Small fingers grasped at miniature wings which hummed impossibly fast and tickled their faces like angel wings fluttering.

  Each child was an image of the other, one tiny voice an echo of the second in a singularity of nature’s choosing as rare as the nova stars that streaked brilliantly across the night sky.

  The babies turned to each other with the sweetness of cherubs – between them a connection that would stretch the vastness of oceans, mountains, and lost decades.

  They were not alone.

  The Lord of the Underworld was close. Silent as death it moved like a black smudge that melted into the shadows beneath the jungle canopy. Eyes hung like yellow orbs in the blackness. The jaguar cocked its broad heavy head and raised its snout to taste babies’ breath on eddies of humid air.

  The cat was achingly hungry. The babies were near.

  ONE

  NEW ORLEANS 2004.

  The music was pounding too hard for anyone to hear the door splintering at the back of 52 Avalon Road. Neighbours – no one. The shattering didn’t wake the man upstairs, who had decided on earplugs to block out the head-splitting noise, and the teenagers downstairs in the rec room were simply having too good a time.

  They clapped their hands – firecracker loud. They whooped and hollered while one of them danced on the sofa, gyrating outrageously and nearly losing her balance.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! “Sherra!” someone squealed. “Shake it, Sherra! Shake it, girl!”

  Sherra Saunier rocked her hips and spun to face her audience. Pumped her pelvis in a ridiculously rude pantomime that caused some of the other girls to cover their mouths, muffling their screeches.

  Good thing too, Sherra thought. Her father had already warned them about the noise, to hit the sack because they had a long drive starting bright and early the next morning. Thump! Thump! Thump! Sherra shook her rear end and howled – prayed her father wouldn’t wake up and ruin her party.

  The rec room was a darkened mess. The floor was littered with empty pizza boxes and half full cans of sticky soda, which the girls had gulped
to see who could burp the loudest. Marilee won that contest hands down and grabbed her prize which was a large poster of their currently favourite boy band. They laughed so hard at Marilee when, with exaggerated lust, she smacked loud wet kisses on each of the young pop idols and rubbed the glossy poster against her small breasts.

  They were all popular in school and best friends who shared everything, including the secrets that if blabbed would certainly ruin them. Stuff like boys and sex. Two of the girls were experts now after consulting some porn site on the internet.

  Roxy screamed, “Marilee, you slut!” Roxy Sparrow’s father was a bible-thumping preacher, but Roxy was the only one who wasn’t a virgin anymore. The other girls had pestered her mercilessly until she told them, in great horrid detail, what it felt like. Samantha, the youngest one, had squealed and rolled on the carpet clutching her groin at the mention of Jacob Cabochon’s erect “thing” and how he had stammered and fumbled until Roxy realized it was over. “Gross,” several of the girls had exclaimed in exaggerated revulsion. “Marilee’s gonna be the next one!”

  The girls didn’t want to stop, even though it was late and they should have crawled into their sleeping bags an hour ago. They were too excited to sleep – too pumped with anticipation. The divisional cheerleading competition was the next day in Biloxi and none of the other teams had practiced as hard as the squad from Avondale Heights High. That was for S-U-R-E.

  They were having such a good time. How could they know someone was in the hallway outside? Sherra and Marilee and the six other girls strutted around in their PJs, dancing to the loud music which obliterated the sounds made by the intruder, including the two gunshots that had already killed Sherra’s sleepy dad.

  The base deepened until the walls shook, causing the girls to scream even louder with delight.

  Outside the door an unseen hand turned the knob slowly.

  The girls continued to howl, limbs and hair whipping recklessly into one another. Someone picked up the thread of lyrics, began singing badly.

  Screw it, Sherra decided. She danced to the boom box and was about to crank it up when she stopped dead in her tracks. Daddy?

  The door was suddenly open. Light from the hallway spilled into the darkened room. All the girls stopped to see who it was, squinted at him against the outside light. The man standing there was too tall and too thin to be Sherra’s dad. He never swayed like he was drunk, and why would he be holding that?

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Music pounded the walls, but the air was deathly still, frozen like ice around the eight screaming girls and the man pointing the gun.

  TWO

  They were only four minutes to air when Jack Doyle spotted the fat man and the politician, a pair too oddly coupled to mean anything but a curious shift in the story. Something delicious. The coroner for Orleans Parish normally rode in a grey sedan, not a long black limousine, but that was how the senator traveled, and when Doyle spotted the shiny car sneaking in through a dirt laneway near the back of the house he knew the story would need updating – fast.

  After a moment he turned and cocked his head, a gesture caught by his field producer. Kaitlin O’Rourke was normally reluctant to bother the talent so close to air. Normally.

  “What’s wrong, Jack?” She couldn’t resist. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  For a moment Doyle said nothing, bunched his eyebrows while he tried to make sense of what he had just observed – the Hitchcockian form of the good doctor Richelieu stomping through the rose garden with Louisiana’s senior senator in tow. Laurel and Hardy, Jack thought, although that might have been cruel given the circumstances. Still, Doyle managed an inward smile as he turned to his producer. “We need to give Senator Robicheaux’s office a quick call,” he said.

  Kaitlin stared at him suspiciously. She’d become accustomed to Jack’s little surprises, the timing of which often threatened their ability to make deadline. It was her ass if they didn’t. “You know something I don’t?”

  “Yep. Ask the flak why his boss just walked into the bloodbath on Avalon Road. It’s possible we missed one.”

  Kaitlin searched the scene beyond Jack, beyond the lights, the television staging area. Seeing nothing that satisfied her curiosity, she grabbed her cell phone and flashed it to her ear.

  Bloodbath wasn’t actually a word Jack planned to use. It was a hackneyed word that he’d already tossed aside, though it still held currency in war zones where whole villages were laid to waste by religious zealots. There were few words to describe what had happened at 52 Avalon Road. Slaughter was too ugly a word when children were involved, and not nearly potent enough. Unfathomable? Maybe. Jack wrote it down, glanced at his watch, and realized it had been only six hours since Walter Carmichael had sent them out the door – with minimal information. “Get to the airport. Shit happening in New Orleans. Bad one, Jack. Call from the plane, we’ll have wire stuff for you.”

  Jack stowed a suit bag in his office for the times Carmichael wanted his best reporter in the air, quickly. They said clothes made the man and that was especially true when you measured your audience by the millions. He was tall and darkly handsome with a crooked disarming smile but would never have been mistaken as a pretty boy or meat puppet, thanks largely to his hard-earned reputation as a story breaker who was never satisfied. Black hair, laced with grey, as well as warmly inquisitive blue eyes earned him a loyal and gold-plated female demographic.

  Unlike the overdressed talent, chase producer Kaitlin O’Rourke traveled light. Her laptop and a couple of changes of clothes because stories never lasted more than a couple of days, even stories of this magnitude. Doyle smoothed the wrinkles on his pale blue shirt and straightened his tie, watching as she worked the phone. Who would have guessed Kaitlin, daughter of that fireplug-of-a-man Argus O’Rourke, would turn into such a knockout? Not Doyle. Anyway, what difference did it make? The Irishman had never been a big fan of the Doyles, something that started a long time ago with Doyle’s father. Bottom line: Kaitlin O’Rourke was a damn good producer, and that meant more to Doyle than her bombshell looks and the long history between them. Still, Doyle had had to twist the screws on his imagination on more than one occasion.

  The corporate Citation aircraft had shot them from New York to New Orleans in three and a half hours with just enough time for that first police briefing and for George to shoot the B-roll. Kaitlin had done a superb job of pulling the material together and vetting Doyle’s script. It was up to Doyle now.

  The massacre. Now there was a good word. The unfathomable massacre would lead all the newscasts that night. Drug involvement made it even juicier, Doyle thought as he checked his notes, trying to recall the exact words of the president not two weeks ago. No more of their poison on our streets, Denton had declared that night. A tough sell, Doyle decided as he jotted it down, considering that even the Drug Enforcement Agency had admitted the borders were leaking cocaine like large mesh nets. Colombia and Peru were the usual suspects.

  “DRAGON SLAYER,” the next day’s headline had shouted in The Washington Post, with Denton’s photograph located large above the fold. When children were killed, slaughtered like lambs, Doyle thought wryly, a presidential declaration such as that gave the story on Avalon Road strong, strong legs. Stronger than anyone knew, he suspected, allowing his mind to wander to Senator Aaron Robicheaux. The silver-haired friend of the Christian right had business at 52 Avalon Road. Doyle wondered about that as he smoothly recapped his pen and looked at his watch in a gesture Kaitlin didn’t miss. “Lay on the charm, O’Rourke. Quickly,” he said.

  News was a calling like the priesthood, but without the rules on sex and compassion. Mercy too. The pack was hungry. To civilians they’d look like selfish irreverent bastards salivating over the biggest story to cross the transom since that wacko murdered his pregnant wife and got the death penalty. Stories like that sucked a reporter up, but when the juice was gone so were the story’s legs. That’s when television crews packed up for the next assig
nment – somewhere else where blood and sorrow were worthy of the lead.

  Doyle spied Mona Lasing fifty feet away at the neighbouring satellite truck. Her famous pout. She was mic’d and primping for her hit – mirror and hairspray artfully choreographed in a kind of synchronized diva ballet. A dozen or so reporters had been dispatched to New Orleans. To the crime scene on Avalon Road. They were melting beneath television lights that sprang up like glow balls for a hundred yards up and down the street. Doyle saw the Fox guy who always wore black, the colour of doom, with pipes that made every story seem like it was the end of time. CNN flew in the Hispanic kid whose on-air uniform was sneakers, jeans and one of those war correspondent vests with a million utility pockets. His shooter was the been-there-done-that Heath, who was firing off film aboard HMS Conqueror when it sent two Tigerfish torpedoes into the Belgrano during the Falklands War. That was before the Hispanic kid was even toilet-trained. Heath looked at Doyle and shook his head, sharing something between veterans who had seen it all.

  Half a dozen satellite trucks were parked nose-to-tail like a herd of circus elephants along a narrow strip of black pavement that sashayed its way past postage stamp yards and antebellum town houses. It was a good neighbourhood, not extravagant, but well-to-do and mostly white. The red streetcars that rolled charmingly along Canal Street to City Park and Beauregard Circle didn’t come this far, and although Avalon Road was not close enough to Jefferson Parish to be considered a bedroom community, its demographics made it feel that way.

  The sharpest bend in the Mississippi was so close you could hear the whistles of casino paddle-wheelers, but Avalon Road was far enough from the Quarter that it entertained neither beaded tourists nor restaurants serving authentic sassafras gumbo and poulet fricassee. The minute Jack Doyle got there he knew Avalon Road wasn’t that part of town where bourbon-and-milk punch was consumed by the frosty bucket and certainly not a neighbourhood where the big network stars reported on the bullet-ridden corpses of ripening debutantes.