Queens

Queens, one of New York City's five boroughs, enters the narrative as the chosen venue for a reckoning. The former Guatemalan death squad commander who is next on the ex-Times man's list owns a restaurant in a mall in Queens, just off the Long Island Expressway. The location is chosen for practical reasons: presumably this is a story whose closure is more conveniently accomplished, involving a short cab ride from the F train at Queens Plaza. Yet the very convenience of the setting becomes the source of the ex-Times man's unease, as the mundane suburban landscape of the borough clashes with the gravity of the moral mission he has undertaken.

The Sociology of the Mall

Standing in front of the restaurant, the ex-Times man is alarmed in spirit by the sociological complexity of a mall restaurant in Queens. He looks out on the thousands of parked and parking cars, the shopping hordes, and the chain megastores. He hears the shouts of mothers and observes the bitter staring ahead of children gripping the chrome railings of their strollers. The air vibrates with the continuous whine of unending traffic going in opposed directions on the adjoining Long Island Expressway, suggesting to him a mindless mimicry of purposiveness. Masses of terraced red-brick tenements fill the sky, filthy fluttering pigeons home in on scraps of junk food, and children dart on their in-line skates between the parked cars. Cruising packs of fashionable teenagers with their floppy jeans, unlaced Air Jordans, and reversed baseball caps complete the scene. The ex-Times man wonders whether any clear moral distinctions could be drawn, or principles acted upon, in this bedlam of free people. He concludes that this is not an appropriate venue for high seriousness, that nothing ethically important could happen here.

The Restaurant Interior

When he steps inside the restaurant itself, his spirits immediately revive. The room is lit in permanent evening, with Haciendic decor and latticed alcoves behind each banquette. The tables are covered in starched white cloth and at each setting is a crystal water glass. The waiters wear bolero jackets. A pleasing unlocatable sound of falling water erases any errant sound of the out-of-doors. It is the lunch hour and perhaps two or three tables are occupied by men in suits—no women or children anywhere. The contrast between the chaotic, democratic sprawl of the Queens mall outside and the controlled, masculine order of the restaurant inside is stark, and it is in this interior space that the ex-Times man finally confronts his target.

The Surveillance Visits

Sitting at the bar talking to the underworked bartender, a man in a blue blazer turns to look at him as he enters. The ex-Times man's heart kicks in: it is the Guatemalan colonel of the clips, a trimly built man with a good tan, a hairline beginning well back on the crown, and a thick black mustache. Not recognizing the patron, the colonel leaves the welcoming ritual to a waiter and turns back to the cigarette in his ashtray. The ex-Times man, his gorge rising, sees in that glance the same ranking arrogance that presumed to decimate the intellectual class of a country for the country's sake while managing to murder villagefuls of peasants in the bargain. But this is just a surveillance visit. Twice more he will come for lunch by himself, and each time his death-squad restaurateur is there, at the bar, and each time he offers no more than an impassive glance before he turns his back to the room. The repetition of these visits, and the colonel's consistent indifference, builds the tension of the scene without resolving it, leaving the ex-Times man's purpose—and his moral certainty—suspended in the permanent evening of the Queens restaurant.