“America wanted it too, Maria Rosa.”
REYNOLDS was already in the minivan, lounging smugly across a double seat, his legs spread as wide as his self-satisfied smile. The crew were packing their gear into the vehicle, but Elia stayed back with Carlos as he gave Maria Rosa the money he’d promised, in an envelope. Only then, did she hop in and tell the driver to head straight for the airport. She and Marcus already knew the satellite uplink in La Paz was hopeless, so editing the material would have to wait till they got back to LA. Reynolds seconded the motion, not because he cared about technical details, he just wanted out of this godforsaken hole. His work was over.
Within minutes of their departure, all the pace?os who’d been squeezing into the cracks between the shanties so they could ogle the bizarre event had scattered back to their own squalid homes.
Two dark figures, their teeth glinting in the watia afterglow, sprung from the shadows. Maria Rosa saw them immediately. She’d been expecting them and greedily extended her hand for her second envelope of the night. She wasn’t completely stupid, she thought, and now she knew the background for the first time she would ask these people for even more money than they’d promised. She’d met them twice now, the first time a few weeks ago, just before Elia had got her tip-off.
Maria Rosa ushered the woman inside the hovel. Diana’s face was dark, her red cap peak pulled low over her eyes, and she was sombre as she handed the woman the fat wad. She placed her hand on Maria Rosa’s shoulder and pressed her fingers in on the bone, “Maria Rosa, you must promise our secret will die with us both.”
“Si,” the bent old woman nodded, the pain in her shoulder and the mention of death hinting that now might not actually be the best time to renegotiate.
Diana smiled and slapped the old woman hard on the back. Maria Rosa felt a sharp pin-prick jab between her shoulder blades and was about to say something when Diana slipped out through the curtain and left. Maria Rosa watched the mysterious woman pass by the hot watia hole and drop something into it, rousing a brief flare to the dying fire. Even if she’d seen it closer up, Maria Rosa would’ve had no idea what a Clip’n’Drip was. She turned back inside and shrugged, a nerve pinching the same painful spot in her back, unaware that in two hours’ time it would never trouble her again; and nor would anything else.
52
THE INTERVIEW ISABEL Diaz agreed to give to Shannon Reynolds had nothing to do with Reynolds and everything to do with Mr Devine, Elia’s boss. Devine had been good to her over the years. It didn’t hurt either that he too was a Catholic.
The set behind Isabel and Reynolds was a poignant blowup of her mother in the doorway of her shanty, with three snotty-nosed, half-dressed urchins clinging to her skirt. “What can I say? It’s history,” Isabel said facing Reynolds on air, and brushing her hair behind an ear. Isabel was trying to emphasise closure, but all it did was show her vulnerability. “But of course I’m disappointed I didn’t know about this before, or my nomination wouldn’t have got scratched.”
“And you’d be President now.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” she shrugged. “In any case, Mr Foster was duly elected, he’s been sworn in and, as a nation, we need to move on.”
“And your mother, Madam Speaker? Seeing her again, on TV, in all that squalor… that filth? It must have shocked a wealthy woman like you.”
Isabel snapped to ice so quickly that Elia, who was watching from off to the side, could almost hear her cracking. Elia had personally negotiated the ground rules with Isabel’s staff. Anything about her feelings for her mother was strictly off-limits. She had agreed to the backdrop photo, but that was to be it.
“I have many regrets, Mr Reynolds, but I’m not disposed to sharing them with you. We agreed on that before this interview, as I recall.” Delivering that last sentence through a sweet smile, she destroyed Reynolds’ prospects of ever interviewing another serious political leader again.
After the interview, Devine wandered onto the set and signalled his nicotine-stained finger over at Reynolds. The “face” strutted over to his boss expecting dollops of praise for his last-minute attempt to throw Isabel off-balance but instead, Devine stretched his arm up around Reynolds’ sculpted shoulders, slipped his cigarette out of his mouth, and edged the interviewer off to the side of the studio where they couldn’t be so easily heard.