Exposure

  At the corner, she saw Angel standing there. He looked at her with his dead eyes and grinned his ratty teeth.

  It’s impressive, Diego has to admit. It’s an old basketball court out in the suburbs, but you’d hardly know it. One end is screened with huge blown-up photographs: shuttered-up shop fronts, graffiti-sprayed walls, the windowless facade of a colonial-era house. Props, too: the wreck of an ancient Chevrolet, a skeleton in carnival costume, soccer balls, Caribbean-style steel drums. A few yards in front of all this, two camera tripods, lamps, light reflectors, aluminum stepladders. In the center of the court is a low tower of scaffolding with spotlights attached to its bars; at the top of it a girl in dungarees is talking urgently into her headset.

  At the far end, a second big screen is a beach scene done cartoon-style in graffiti spray paint. On the floor, a carefully vandalized beach chair beneath a wickerwork parasol bathed in electric sunlight. Another collection of photographic apparatus, and a group of people having animated discussions around a tall, thin man with long black hair, whom Diego recognizes as the photographer, David Bilbao. A blond young man who looks like a gringo spots Diego and breaks away from the group.

  “You must be Señor Mendosa,” he says, holding out his hand. “Marco, David’s assistant.”

  “Diego,” Diego says. “Hi.”

  Marco peers behind Diego as though someone might be concealed there. “I thought Desmerelda Brabanta would be with you.”

  “Er, no. I’m sorry to say that she is unwell. I think it’s unlikely she will be able to join us.”

  The effect of this news on Marco is remarkable. It is as though someone has informed him that his entire family has died in a plane crash.

  “Oh, my God,” he moans from behind his long fingers. “That’s all we need.”

  Diego is concerned. “Why? Are you having problems?”

  Marco directs a haunted look over toward the beach set, then takes Diego by the arm and leads him to the front row of the spectator seats. They sit. Diego sees that on the other side of the court, close to the gap in the seating that must lead to the locker rooms, Dario Puig and Harumi are inspecting wheeled racks of clothes sheathed in plastic. Their staff is all wearing black ninja-style outfits with REKI on the back printed in acid green.

  “Well,” Marco says, after taking a deep breath. “Let’s just say that things thus far haven’t gone entirely smoothly. First off, only about half the kids turned up at the collection points. And some of those weren’t the ones we were expecting. They were — how can I put this politely? — little urchins. One of them managed to smuggle a knife past the security. As a result, one of the boys we want to use now has a wound in his arm. But, thank God, David saw it positively. The bandage we put on the kid will look nice, he thinks. We may have to touch the blood up a little, but that’s fine.”

  “Good,” Diego says. “But you’ve got enough kids? Don’t tell me we’re going to have to round up some more.”

  “No. There are fifteen that David likes, which is plenty. More than enough, if you ask me. The ones David didn’t pick didn’t take it too well. The girls were particularly dreadful. Still, we managed to get them all back on the buses with their thirty dollars in their sticky little fists. Let’s hope they spend it wisely.”

  Diego blinks at this, but manages to keep his face straight.

  “Anyway, they’ve gone,” Marco says. “The others are down in the changing rooms. We went out and got some buckets from a twenty-four-hour fried chicken place, and that seems to be keeping them quiet. Then there are the technical problems. But I won’t bore you with those.”

  “Thank you,” Diego says appreciatively. “I like the sets, by the way. The backdrops.”

  Marco brightens. In fact, he blushes slightly.

  Noting it, Diego says, “Your idea, by any chance?”

  “Yes, actually. I’m rather pleased with the beach one; it was quite problematic. For obvious reasons, we couldn’t take these . . . children on actual location, down to the coast. Can you imagine? And there was absolutely no way we were going to fake it, with a truckload of white sand and hokey plastic palm trees. So I came up with the graffiti idea. We have these lovely rough-looking kids in gorgeous shorts and bikinis and so forth, and we shoot them up against a dream, a fantasy, of a beach that’s been sprayed on a wall in a slum. It’s ironic, you see. It sort of ties in with Dario and Harumi’s concept. The contradictions involved in being a teenager, all of that.”

  Diego nods thoughtfully; Marco waits expectantly.

  “Excellent,” Diego says. “Perfect, in fact. Well done.”

  Two hours later, and Diego has come to the conclusion that fashion shoots must be among the most tedious things ever devised. Golf is thrilling by comparison. He has removed himself to a high place in the banked seats beyond the reach of the lights and sits brooding, calculating. The business is going to last well into the evening, he now realizes. It will make things difficult for him, perhaps. During one of the intense fusses that punctuate the actual photography, he sees Marco head off toward the bathroom and intercepts him on the way back.

  “Marco, excuse me. Look, I have to go and see to a couple of things. I probably won’t be able to get back until late afternoon. What I was wondering is, would I be able to look at the shots you’ve taken by then? Señora Brabanta is expecting me to report back to her on how things have gone, and, well . . .”

  Marco considers this with immense seriousness, trying not to dwell on Diego’s beautifully lustrous eyes.

  “Well,” he says at last, “what I could do is download the digitals onto disk. We’d be doing that anyway, obviously. So you could have a little peek at them on my laptop.”

  “That would be great, Marco. Thank you.”

  “But we’d have to be very discreet. David would murder me twice if he found out I’d let you look at unedited stuff. He’s an absolute perfectionist.”

  “I understand that,” Diego says solemnly. He pats Marco affectionately on the upper arm as a token of his appreciation.

  The thrill of it all, the strangeness of joy, is almost scary. It is as though her heart has risen to a higher place in her body; it beats at the base of her throat, so that she has to breathe in quick, light gasps. But she is not scared. She is so happy, so very happy that she has been found at last. It was surprising that in the mirror she could not see the aura made of starlight that must certainly surround her. A young man, serious as a priest and wearing white latex gloves, had teased out her hair using the long handle of a steel comb. She had been expecting makeup, the full works: eyes, lips, everything. Instead he had only brushed her cheekbones and the tip of her nose with a powder that didn’t show. It was a little bit disappointing. Still, the brush was the softest thing she had ever been touched by. She’d closed her eyes, lifting her face to it.

  Now she is taken to a space behind some curtains, and two kind of creepy but smiling girls all in black dress her in such beautiful new clothes, clothes no one has ever worn before, knee-length shorts, tight to her skin, but soft, soft as cream and the color of cream, and like a long hoodie in the same color but with these thin dark stripes running all down it. It is so cool, she feels like she can fly, and they tell her she can keep them for always (because what else can they do with them after kids like her have worn them, but that’s not something she hears them say), then they take her out into the bright colored lights that look like they’re shining through rain and she hopes it isn’t because she’s crying, and then all the people look at her and some clap — yes, they clap — and smile at her, and it’s like something wonderful unfolds inside her and spreads and whispers, Yes, it’s you. It’s you at last.

  And they take pictures, lots, not just one, saying, “That’s lovely, Bianca. Just like that. But don’t smile, okay? Try not to smile. Maybe think about something sad.”

  And that is the only hard thing, trying not to smile. To remember something sad.

  “This one’s a honey,” David Bilbao murmu
rs, switching cameras. “You did well finding her. How old is she? Any idea?”

  Marco shrugs modestly. “None at all. Kids like these, they could be anything.”

  Bilbao turns away and calls over to the stands. “Harumi? Harumi, I’d like to see this girl in some other things, okay? Some of the sweatshirts, maybe. Or the soccer jerseys.”

  Then he says to the woman standing next to him with the clipboard, “Put her down for the swimwear, too, please.”

  They shoot her again late in the afternoon. On the beach chair, webbed by the shadow of the umbrella, pretending to read a magazine. Then with her hands on her hips, a volleyball between her feet. Then standing with her back to the camera, looking over her shoulder as if someone unwelcome has just walked onto her private spray-painted beach.

  Marco is fretful. “She’s posing. It doesn’t seem to matter what we say to her, for God’s sake.”

  Peering through the viewfinder, Bilbao says, “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got some good ones when she’s not ready. Besides, I think the posing is kind of charming. Precisely because she’s not good at it. There’s a rather touching awkwardness about it. I’m inclined to think we should use some of those.”

  “Well, okay. But isn’t some of it a bit, you know . . .”

  “Obvious? Lewd?”

  “Yes, quite frankly.”

  “It’s all in the eye of the beholder, Marco. All in the eye of the beholder.”

  Diego sits outside the light, looking down at the beautiful half-naked child drenched in light. Absolutely focused on her.

  And when, later, alone in the now empty office behind the ticket booth, he copies Marco’s disks onto a memory stick, he makes sure they include all the pictures of her.

  From his car, he tries ringing Desmerelda again. This time she answers.

  “Hi, Diego.” She sounds tired.

  “Dezi. I’ve been so worried about you. I tried to call but —”

  “Yeah, I know. I had to turn my phone off.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. My blood pressure went way up, and baby chose that moment to change position. It’s normal, apparently. So, how was the shoot?”

  “In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined anything more boring.”

  She laughs. “Well, I guess you’re a virgin when it comes to this kind of thing. Did you expect it to be fun?”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “Well, now you know. It’s like work, but worse. Was it okay, though?”

  “I think so,” he says, leaving room for doubt. “There were problems with the kids, as we expected. But Bilbao and his people seem happy with the results.”

  “Have you seen any of the pictures?”

  “No. They’re being pretty cagey. I guess they want to edit and so forth before we all get to look at them. I imagine it might take some time.”

  “Yeah. Look, the people here want me to stay overnight. Just for observation.”

  “You mean you’re still at the clinic? Dezi, are you sure everything’s all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, like I said. But the thing is, Otello doesn’t know I’m here. I didn’t call him, because the game kicked off at six thirty, right? And I reckoned the last thing he’d need before going out was me giving him stress. So look, Diego, would you do me a favor? Call him, or maybe text him, after the game’s over, tell him where I am, and not to worry?”

  “I’ll do that. Promise.”

  “Bless you. And tell him I’ll call him first thing in the morning, before his flight leaves.”

  “I’ll do that, Dezi.”

  “Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow. And thanks for everything.”

  He sits in the dark assessing the possibilities. Otello and Desmerelda’s penthouse will be unoccupied tonight; he knows the five-digit key code that will get him in; he knows the night security guys by name, and they won’t find a visit by him at this hour odd or memorable. They’ll know that Otello is not there, of course; the one at the desk will be watching the game. Will they know that Desmerelda is not at home, either? Maybe not, but maybe isn’t quite good enough. The crucial thing is the CCTV. How long do they keep the tapes before they wipe them? A week? A month? He curses himself; he should have found out.

  No, he decides. It’s too risky. But it’s all right. His luck is good. It’s not even luck; the world is on his side. An opportunity will present itself.

  The clock on the dashboard says it’s ten minutes to eight. The game has twenty-five, maybe thirty minutes to go. The kids could come out of the basketball court any minute; they must, surely to God.

  He calls Otello’s cell, waits for the beep, relays Dezi’s message, spicing it with a little twist of anxiety, just for his own pleasure. Then he switches his phone off and, although it’s a bit risky, drives across the parking lot closer to where the dim lights illuminate the vans. He waits for another fifteen minutes before the kids are brought out. The girl gets into the second van, and when it coughs its way to the gate, he follows it.

  Later, much later, he eases himself into his apartment and drinks a large glass of water from the kitchen tap. He will not go to Emilia until his nerves have settled, just in case she is awake. He holds the glass in one hand and checks his phone with the other. Amazing what hands can do. Surgery. Embroidery. Murder. He sniffs the one holding the phone. A slightly stale, musky smell — or is he imagining it?

  There’s a message from Otello. “Thanks for the call, Diego. I managed to get through to the clinic, and they say Dezi’s fine and she’ll be able to come home in the morning. I’m going to fly back tonight so I can pick her up. There’s a late plane. I’m in the taxi on the way to the airport right now. You see the game, or did you have something more interesting to do?”

  Diego leans against the sink, wondering whether or not to drink some whiskey. And wondering what time a private prenatal clinic might discharge a rich and famous client. Not early, for sure.

  He steals into the bedroom. Emilia is asleep. He decides against the Scotch and goes along the corridor to the study and turns his computer on. He slots the little black memory stick into a USB port. When the screen fills with tiny images, he studies them intently for a considerable time. Then he begins to edit.

  AT NINE O’CLOCK the following morning, Otello is coming out of the shower wearing a bathrobe and toweling his hair when the door buzzer sounds. He groans, so Michael Cass goes through to the hallway and looks at the little screen.

  “It’s Diego,” he calls. “Looks like a goddamn florist shop on legs.”

  “Hi,” Diego says from behind his extravagant bouquet of white and yellow blooms. He looks flustered and concerned, and there’s orange pollen on his nose.

  Cass grins. “I didn’t know you cared.”

  Diego looks at him blankly for three seconds, then smiles. “You know I do, Michael. But these aren’t for you. Sorry to disappoint. How is she?”

  “Fine, far as we know.”

  “She’s not back?”

  Otello comes into the room, zipping up his jeans. “No,” he says. “Michael and I are just about to go and get her. Nice flowers, man. Nice thought.”

  “Yeah, well,” Diego says. “I figured you wouldn’t’ve had the time to . . . Anyway, she’s okay, is she?”

  “She’s great. I talked to her about fifteen minutes ago. Look, uh, we need to get going.”

  “Right,” Diego says. “I thought Dezi might be back and settled by now. I’ll be sorry to have missed her.” He looks quite desolate.

  So Otello says, “Look, why don’t you wait here? Find something to put the flowers in, load up the coffee machine? I know Dezi will want to see you, anyway. To talk about the photo shoot and stuff. I want to hear about that, too. How long’ll we be, Michael? Forty-five, fifty minutes?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” Cass says.

  “Ah, I don’t know,” Diego says. “I don’t want to be in the way. Besides, I’ve got meetings from eleven on.”

&n
bsp; “Loads of time, man. Do like I say. Stay here. We’ll have a breakfast party. Dezi’ll love it. Tell you what, call that good deli. The number’s on the board in the kitchen. Get them to send some pastries and whatever around. They know what we like.”

  “Well, okay. But if Dezi needs to just, you know, rest up when she gets back, I’ll make myself scarce.”

  “Sure. Okay, Michael. Ready?”

  When they’ve gone, Diego wanders into the bedroom and looks around. He sniffs at some of the jars and bottles on the dressing table. Then he goes into the dressing room and runs his hands through Dezi’s clothes hanging in the closets. He urinates in the en suite bathroom and doesn’t flush the bowl. Then he walks down to the study and sits at the computer. The screen saver is running: a slide show of stills from Desmerelda videos. He takes a pair of latex gloves from one of his jacket pockets and puts them on, then taps the space bar. Out of idle curiosity he reads the first six e-mails in the in-box, then takes the black memory stick from his inside pocket and clicks on START.

  FAUSTINO HAD SPENT two days in Brazil, where work and high humidity had kept him away from his usual temptations. On his return, he’d startled Marta and his colleagues by turning up at the office before nine in the morning. He had a lot of stuff to write up, but a backlog of e-mails and numerous phone calls thwarted his efforts. By lunchtime he was irritable. It would have been sensible to work through the break, but he needed air — by which he meant a cigarette or two. He’d go and sit on the patio, get Bush to fetch him a toasted sandwich and a juice. Besides, it was a beautiful day.

  And because it was a beautiful day, the patio was pretty crowded. The benches were all taken, so Faustino propped his backside on the edge of one of the plant troughs. He looked around for the familiar glimpse of the kid’s dreads and smile. After a while he went over to Rubén.

  “He ain’t been here since the day you left, Señor Paul.”