An Absence of Light

While Remberto and Murray were crossing the city, Dani had gone ahead and called the other two condos in the complex. The residents were not home at either of them. So of the five residences, the only ones that were occupied were Connie’s, where Faeber was waiting, and the one on the other side, the one immediately to the right as you entered the compound. Knowing this, Remberto did not have to worry about someone seeing him from behind or across the way. There had not been enough time to determine if there was an alarm system, and even if they had known that there was one, there had not been enough time to bring the electronic equipment to manipulate it or to contact their stringer at whichever security company had installed the system.

So, it was back to the jungle. Remberto was going to have to find a place outside in Micheson’s courtyard where he could watch Connie’s front door without Faeber being able to see him from inside the condo. It was just going to be a matter of scouting it out to see what vantage point best served the purpose.

Locating the right vantage point turned out to be easier than he had expected, though using it was going to be a tedious proposition. The brick wall separating Connie’s front courtyard from Micheson’s was ten inches wide. The design for the brick of which it was made called for a random placement of bricks to stick out several inches from the face of the wall creating a relatively accessible means of ascent The garages of the two condos backed up to each other having a common wall while the wall of the garages facing the entrances formed the front wall of the courtyard. Just inside Connie’s entrance court, in the corner created by the garage wall and the wall dividing the two properties, grew a healthy and shaggy Mexican fan palm, its large and verdant fronds just high enough to reach over the top of the wall.

Remberto used the jutting bricks to climb the wall and found a place to sit atop the wall leaning his back against the garage wall and under its eave. The fronds of the fan palm completely obscured him from the courtyard and from the windows on the front of Connie’s condo. He called Murray.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m in place, on top of the wall in her front courtyard.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, really. Listen, it’s quiet here. If someone’s coming just buzz me twice.”

“Will do.”

Remberto settled in to wait He was fully aware that he might be there for hours, in fact, he expected to be. He also expected to be uncomfortable. And he was. Both courtyards were lush with vegetation which meant the humidity there was at the top end of the scale; and he felt every percentage point. The sun was just a little past meridian which meant the eave of the garage provided a ribbon of shade for the back of his head, but the ribbon was shrinking by the minute. Pretty soon he would be in full sun for an hour or so until the fan palm began to block it The steam rose out of the courtyards, and colonies of gnats moved in small congregations like clouds from palms to oleanders to azaleas to plumerias and eventually to Remberto whose sweat-drenched clothes attracted them like bees to nectar. That was okay. Remberto had lived with gnats before. Sweat poured from his hairline and ran down the back of his neck, behind his ears, down his forehead and into his eyes. That was okay. He had lived with sweat before.

But the brick wall was something else. Remberto’s butt was wider than ten inches, and after an hour he thought his spine was going to lock up on him. After an hour and a half he was beginning to get worried about what he was going to do. This was not something he thought he could endure for five or six hours. Instead of keeping his legs and feet together, pulled up in front of him, he shifted and dropped one on either side of the wall. That was a great relief-for about eight minutes-then the ridges of the bricks began to cut into his inner thighs, and he felt like his tailbone had no flesh at all between it and the bricks.

Then the handset buzzed twice.

Remberto froze and listened carefully. The signal meant only that a car was entering the compound. It could go to any residence, and he strained to try to determine which. Within a minute he heard the soft wheezing of an idling car pull into the concrete drive in front of Micheson’s garage to his left It idled for a moment and then stopped.

There was a brief wait before he heard the car door open. Girlfriend? Cleaning woman? Micheson sneaking back into town early without telling his employer? He knew Murray had been watching the car since it entered and would be observing where it finally stopped, and that he already would have called in the license plate for verification.