Free Heaven Is High by Kate Wilhelm

whom Anaia Santos had married, what her married name was.
    Abruptly she turned and headed back to her car. It would take a human being talking to another human being to find out Anaia Santos’s married name, to find out where she was, and to plead with her on behalf of Binnie. Not Bailey. She could not send him to plead with Augustus Santos, the tyrannical parent, or with Anaia, either. Bailey had his uses, but this was not one of them. He could sum up pages of reports succinctly and thoroughly, but then he withdrew, and this could take pleading, special pleading even.
    You’re tilting at windmills, she told herself, making a meaningless gesture because there simply was not enough time. She started her car, checked the rearview mirror, but her inner critic was still demanding a voice. Immigration would win because time would run out. Going there would be no more than another blindfolded stab at an impossible target. A waste of time, of Martin’s money. It would be no more than an attempt to soothe her conscience, to try to make herself believe she had not taken on a case with zero chance of helping her client. To try to justify making a promise she had not known she could keep.
    She shook her head as if to quiet that other voice. She had to try anything and everything she could think of to prevent a murder-suicide. Martin’s words spoken quietly, and with absolute conviction, had elicited her promise, and now she had to go to Belize. That other voice was silenced.
    She drove home too fast, hurried inside, and was dialing the travel agent used by the law firm before she had her jacket off. It was late, but the agency was used to handling emergency situations for the firm. An hour later she called Bailey to come by between one and two the following afternoon.
    *   *   *
    â€œDon’t give me a hard time,” she said irritably to Bailey on Wednesday. “I already know all the arguments against it. And I don’t see anything else I can do. They can’t survive as fugitives, not with the government after them, and that’s what they face. That creep in immigration is salivating over having a celebrity on his hit list to make an example of. He’s practicing his strut for when he demonstrates that not even the rich and famous can get away with concealing an illegal alien. I know how that goes.”
    The letter demanding, not requesting, Binnie’s presence on Friday had irked her beyond reason. As a consequence she had prepared two letters, one for a Dennis Linfield in Eugene, and one for his superior, Walter Sokolosky, in Portland. She handed them both to Bailey. “Mail that one tonight and this one tomorrow. I want them both delivered by Friday and that should do it. Certified, return receipt on both of them.”
    â€œBarbara, you don’t have a clue about what you’ll be stepping into,” he said morosely. “If your pal Nicholson is Marcos’s pal, drugs are probably involved. People get shot nosing around in the drug trade. Did you read that stuff about Marcos?”
    She had read it, and she had even been in his shop that featured imported clothes and handcrafted items from Central America. Bailey’s report had also said again that he was likely a drug dealer, never charged, but rumored to be the one to go to.
    Ignoring his words, Barbara handed him another sheet of paper. “My flight schedule, going and coming back. I’ll drive to Portland this evening, catch that crack-of-dawn flight in the morning, and by evening be in Belize.”
    â€œBy way of L.A. and Mexico City,” he said with deepening gloom as he looked over the schedule.
    â€œIf I’m not back by next Thursday, send in the marines,” she said. “Or at least tell Dad where I was last seen.”
    â€œHe doesn’t know?”
    â€œI told him I have to research some old records, that I’m off to L.A. in the morning.” Did a part lie