Life Blood --XI---Page 37

"You got the prick's license number?" he exclaimed. "Why the hell didn't you say so?"

"Honestly, it sort of slipped my mind. I'm having a little trouble thinking straight right now."

Fortunately my short-term memory is pretty good, even when I'm stressed, so I spewed it out.

"Don't go anywhere," he declared. "I'll get back to you in five minutes."

I hung up the phone and lay down, flat out on the carpet,

trying a breathing exercise to calm down. The problem was, it

wasn't working. Having had some experience with being robbed—I
once got completely cleaned out when I had a ground-floor
apartment down in the Village—I know you go through certain
Kubler-Ross-like stages of anger, denial, depression, acceptance.
You also go through a predictable series of recriminations: I
should have had window bars and gates; I should have had a
different lock; I should have had two different locks. In the
instance just recalled, I'm virtually certain an apartment painter
duplicated a set of my keys on his lunch break and then passed
them on to a second-story artist. No way to prove that, mind you,
but it had to be what happened. I also suspect he checked my
appointments calendar to see when I was going to be out of town.
        But in this case the lock was definitely picked. Nobody had a
set of my keys except the super, and Steve. So the guy with the
Spanish accent knew how to slip through doors and he had no
financial interest in my old VCR. He only had an interest in my
film. What had he said there on the sidewalk outside Paula
Marks's apartment? Something about how making this picture
was a big mistake?

I jumped as the phone erupted by my ear.

"The name Colonel Jose Alvino Ramos Grijalva mean anything to you?" Lou asked.

"How could it? I'm not sure I can even pronounce it."

"Well, Colonel Ramos declares himself to be a military

attaché at the Guatemalan Consulate here. You've got a big shot in the Guatemalan Army rummaging through your apartment. This is even worse than I thought. Those guys are killers."

"Jesus." I was still coming to grips with the horrifying fact he'd been in my apartment, in my only refuge. "Think I could bring
charges against him?"

"Well, let's consider this a minute. Probably no prints, no
credible witness. You'd have a damned hard time proving

anything." He sighed. "Truth is, I doubt you could even get a

restraining order, given what little you've got to work with."

"The bastard." I sat a moment, feeling the logical, left side of my brain just shut down. My mind went back to its most primitive level, running on adrenaline. "Look, I need to check out
something. I'll call you in the morning."

"Well, be careful," he said warily. "And for God's sake don't go running off anyplace alone. I'm telling you you're not safe. Always be around people."

"I'll keep it in mind." With that I gently hung up the phone and
exhaled.

Think. Some colonel from Guatemala just broke into my

apartment looking for what I might know about Children of Light, where I've been going to see about having a baby. So why is he so interested in what I'm doing?

I remembered Alex Goddard wanted me to go to a "clinic" he
had somewhere in Central America. Ten to one that clinic was in
Guatemala. That was what this whole thing was about. And now
he'd just gone back there; at least that was what he'd said.

Guatemala was a long way off, but his other operation was right up the river. I hadn't seen all of it this morning, but that was about to change. A lot of things were about to change. It was time to start getting the playing field level again.