Zero Saints Abroad

Five years ago, I landed in the old country for the first time to visit my brother. As my chauffeur sped across that jaw dropping green valley, I wondered why the locals paid no mind to their own gorgeous landscape. People were too busy surviving here. He finally dropped me off at the beach where my brother had built his bricked house on top of a hill in an American cape Cod style. From a distant glance, it looked like the same home we grew up in. That beautiful memory was distracted by the foul stench of something rotten in the vicinity.

I lit a cigarette and speedily walked up the steep concrete steps that wrapped around the yard like a python on a tree. Then, I caught a glimpse of that dreadful yellow police tape, and my cigarette quivered from my lips. Please don't let it be. The thought of something bad happening to my own flesh and blood had terrified me. I felt like my breath had escaped me.

I made my way under the tape, but didn't get far.

Officer Sanchez extended his hand out. "Aye! Qué estás haciendo aquí?!"

He shook his baton side to side and demanded an explanation for my trespassing.

"Porfavor." I pleaded. "I need to know what's going on."

The officer knew I hadn't been a local from my bastardized Spanish.

I told him I was in town to visit my brother.

Then I spotted another officer coming out from the house to cool off from a heated discussion.

He left the door open when I caught a glimpse of a sobbing woman inside. She held a bloodied tissue and pressed it against her nose.

"Fernando!?" she cried out noticing me outside. "Is that you?..."

Her caramel brown eyes stared as wide as possible as if she saw a ghost in me.

The officer quickly walked back inside and shut the door to calm her down.  

"You really can't be in here." Officer Sanchez said. He escorted me away from the property and lead me down to a seafood restaurant on the beach nearby. During the interrogation, I learned my brother, Fernando had been kidnapped. The police said they had found two bodies in the house, but neither of them were him. I gave Officer Sanchez my contact information and made him promise to give me the latest news. I found a hotel nearby to stay in while I waited for them. 

While waiting, the empty beer bottles piled up on my table as my mind raced. The patrol vehicles had finally left for the night.

I snuck my way up the hill again, up to my brother's house to find clues.

Inside my brother's living room, I saw a collage of photos on the coffee table. The first one that caught my eye was a picture of us. We were both happy teens living in the U.S. We use to play tricks on our parents because they couldn't tell us apart. Our lives spiraled down through that nasty divorce. And a situation made more disparaging through the drastically different lifestyles we were raised into. I went with my father who lived in a suburban wealthy part of Boston and he remarried. Our sweet, optimistic but stubborn mother left back to her own country, a dog-eat-dog world with less-than-redeemable crime statistics. She brought you to live with her and her entire family, while I stayed.

Life for you, I heard had its beautiful peaceful moments , but it was always unpredictable.

The other picture framed was a recent photo of my brother with his girlfriend, the hysterical sobbing woman from earlier. My brother's face looked so different from what I remembered. He had become barely recognizable to me. He was very thin, and his face was extensively tatooed in black ink and piercings.

It honestly shocked me.

I knew those symbols were an affiliation to something dangerous in the country.

I continue scoping the house with a flashlight to find more answers.

Then I tensed up. "This is it." I pounded my hand on the mattress angrily. "Estupido!"

One view of Fernando's room said a thousand words. All that money in remittance that our father had sent him, in hopes of seeing him live a comfortable lifestyle yet, my brother still managed to screw it all up for himself.

All that remained in the bedroom was fragments of a destroyed beakers and flasks from some kind of chemistry lab, remnants of a troubled life.

I wiped the tears away from my face. I should have been more involved in my brother's life but I thought he hated me all these years.

After a while, I felt nauseous from the rotten smell left in the walls from the concoction of drugs being brewed. The hot tropical-humidity didn't help at all to get some fresh air.

"If you throw up, do it on the lawn over there." a woman said.

I jumped and pointed my shaking flashlight to her like it was a pistol.

She looked at me then back towards the streets nonchalantly smoking a cigarette.

"Did you do this? Did you get him kidnapped and involved in this bullshit!?"

She shook her head disappointedly.

Her voice was raspy from the crying and thick with a Central American accent. "Ha. Your brother wasn't a saint!" She looked at me up and down. "Nobody here is. Life here has its vital points in history, it moves like the tropical weather here, with dazzling periods of bright blue, beautiful skies then long stretches of dreary fog that consumes the place..."

"Where do you think they took him?"

"It's no secret where he is. You see the end of that peninsula." She pointed to a spacious mansion with a lighthouse at the end of the beach. "Probably has several patrols guarding it 24/7, along with the seaports he controls. He owns the whole fucking trade network in this country."

"Who does?"

"They call him. "El Gordito." she took another puff. "He's the most powerful man this side of the Panama canal."

"This is unreal... "

"It's like a terrible dream" she cried. "There's no chance he's still alive."

"What about the cops? They could still find him?"

Then as she took another puff of her cigarette, we both noticed the sound of a window getting smashed.

It was followed by barking dogs coming from the hotel room I had been staying in. 

"There's your cops right there." she whispered. "You talked to them, didn't you?"

"Yes...Shit. Are you safe here? Why haven't they come back for you?"

"They have no interest in me. I'm just a cautionary tale. I'm a trophy widow to a dead husband's stupid attempt at business expansion."

"Wait. You two were married?"

"We were engaged.... this was the big news he wanted to tell you. This is why he invited you here after seven years to reconnect. He really wanted to grow this relationship with you.  

"There must be something we could do. I can't go back not knowing for sure."

"I thought I had seen a ghost earlier when I saw you. I didn't want it to be a true. We were eventually going to leave this life behind. We were too late..." she mumbled.

"What if we pay someone to help us?"

"Did you not hear me?" She tossed a beer bottle across the lawn. "He owns everyone in this country. He's untouchable!"

"What if I go myself..." I showed her a handgun I found in my brother's dresser.

I was so close in doing something stupid before she stopped me. She told me not to throw my life away like she did hers. I stared at the gun and placed it on a coffee table. It was another horrific reminder of my brother's mysterious life coming into fruition.

Then we heard loud screeching tires driving away from the front of the house.

Somebody dropped off a large black bag on the front lawn.

I got out of the country the next morning and felt hopeless, until my brother's fiancé reached out to me. She spoke about a new young President with hopeful dreams. It brought me comfort in knowing somebody wanted to change the status quo. I used my money in support for him. Few years later, I watched as the new President Raphael Delgado gave his inaugural speech to the masses of wide-eyed hopeful citizens, they were all eager for their lives back. They deserved it and some dignity for the several decades of acclimated hell dealing with the large amounts of violence caused by a few powerful drug dealers.

The charismatic Delgado pounded his fist on the podium and promised a sweeping change in the nation. He was fed up, he said. Fed up of not having control.

I watched as that change came in the contexts of a blurry anonymous video sent to my phone. The footage were images of a heavy-set drug baron named El Gordito handcuffed by a patrol vehicle, another man besides him was one I recognized, the disgraced Officer Sanchez. Their Empire soon crumbled along with them as they were sentenced to life.

I took a celebratory sip of my brother's favorite beer in his memory and as a tribute for another bright moment in history.