Hot Sur by Laura Restrepo

Author:Laura Restrepo
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: AmazonCrossingEnglish
Published: 2015-09-30T23:00:00+00:00

7

Interview with Ian Rose

Rose was still in the shower when the buzzer rang and had to get out wet and in a towel to open the door for Pro Bono, who had arrived earlier than agreed upon at the studio on St. Mark’s. “Maybe ‘agreed upon’ is not the right term,” Rose tells me. They had not actually agreed to anything yet. Rose had been asleep when he answered the phone at about four or five in the morning and heard Pro Bono give an order through the fog of his sleep. “That’s his style, giving orders. I hadn’t agreed to anything,” Rose clarifies. Pro Bono had told him to get ready because they had to leave in an hour. “Anyway, I got up,” Rose tells me, “I guess to see what would happen. Soon I was opening the door for him, with a towel wrapped around my waist, and he, of course, was looking like a million bucks.”

Even at that early hour, Pro Bono was more gussied up than on the previous day: his shirt impeccable, white and crispy; a heavy Hermès silk tie; a dark flannel, custom-tailored suit with chalk pinstripes; a touch of classic and clean Equipage cologne; Cartier Panthere watch, wedding band on his left ring finger, and a ring with the family shield on the pinkie of the same hand. A bit too fancy for Rose’s taste. In that, just that, it was clear that the hump had made a dent in Pro Bono’s personality, which was otherwise overwhelming. It was as if he had to use everything in his exclusive closet and barricade himself behind big brands to make up for his deformity.

Rose let Pro Bono in, offered him tea and, like the day before, immediately felt intimidated by the man. Pro Bono was overbearing, at once irritable and paternal, or patronizing—Rose wasn’t sure what to call it. In any case, it was a combination Rose did not like to deal with.

“It’s about María Paz,” Pro Bono told Rose, ignoring Rose’s greeting and glaring at him with yellow-hazel eyes.

“I figured,” Rose said.

“It’s serious.”

“How serious?”

“Serious.”

“Did something happen last night?”

“It’s been happening for a while, but just I found out about it last night.”

“What makes you think I can help you?”

“We have to be at Manninpox before 9:15. You know the way because you live right near it.”

“How do you know that?” Rose asked. The day before he had given Pro Bono the phone and address of the studio on St. Mark’s; he had not mentioned the house in the mountains.

“They know everything in my office.”

Rose tried to explain that he wasn’t going back to the Catskills yet because he had unfinished business in the city. But Pro Bono wasn’t one to take no for an answer, and simply pretended not to hear. He had assumed that Rose would go on this trip and that was the end of the discussion.

“He said it like that, ‘you have to leave early, my friend,’” Rose tells me, “that’s

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