Chapter 8 - Midnight at the Sun Theater
The Sun Theater had been abandoned for twenty years.
Its golden letters had fallen from the roof one at a time until only three remained. Broken posters covered the entrance, showing singers and actors whose faces rain had washed away.
At eleven thirty that night, Mateo parked two streets away.
He had forbidden me to come.
I had ignored him.
Rafael came too, though his hands were cuffed in front of him. He had identified the ring as his wife’s, but insisted Esteban would keep her alive until he recovered the film.
Valeria checked the magazine of her pistol.
“Once we enter, stay behind me.”
“You said that at the station.”
“And you did not listen.”
“I survived.”
“That is not proof of intelligence.”
Mateo looked at us both.
“This is not a game. Esteban may have twenty men inside.”
“Then why bring only six?” I asked.
“Because the police are watching every road.”
“Captain Salazar’s police?”
Mateo’s expression answered me.
We entered through the theater’s rear loading door.
Dust covered the stage. Torn curtains hung from the ceiling. Rows of seats disappeared into darkness.
A spotlight came alive.
Esteban stood in the center of the stage.
Lucio sat beside him with his injured leg wrapped in bandages. Two armed men held a woman and a teenage boy on their knees.
Rafael stopped breathing.
“Isabel.”
His wife looked toward him.
Her face was bruised, but she was alive.
Their son could not have been older than sixteen.
Esteban raised the silver cross taken from my grandmother’s grave.
“You cost me patience, Mateo.”
Mateo stepped into the light.
“Release them.”
“Give me Aurelio.”
“No.”
Rafael looked at Mateo in horror.
Esteban smiled.
“A faithful answer from an unfaithful brother.”
“What do you want with the boy?” Mateo asked.
“The second film is hidden somewhere in this building. Esperanza designed the hiding place so that only Aurelio could recognize it.”
I looked around the ruined theater.
My grandmother had brought me here once when I was six.
We sat outside because we had no money to enter. She told me that my mother had loved music and that the sun above the stage had once opened when the orchestra played.
I looked upward.
A faded golden sun was painted across the ceiling.
Only Aurelio could recognize it.
The film was above the stage.
Esteban saw where I looked.
“So simple,” he whispered.
His men began climbing toward the rigging.
I stepped forward.
“Let Rafael’s family go.”
Esteban laughed.
“You have nothing to trade.”
“I know how to open it.”
His men stopped.
Mateo whispered, “Aurelio, no.”
I ignored him.
“My grandmother taught me the song.”
This was a lie.
But Esteban believed it.
“What song?”
I climbed onto the stage.
“Release them first.”
Lucio shook his head.
“He is manipulating you.”
“He is twelve.”
“So was Mateo when he first lied to our father.”
The brothers stared at each other.
Esteban ordered one guard to release Rafael’s son. The boy ran across the stage and collapsed into his father’s arms.
“His wife stays,” Esteban said. “Until the film is in my hand.”
I walked toward an old piano near the curtain.
Several keys were broken. Dust rose as I pressed them.
I did not know the song.
But I remembered Grandmother humming three notes whenever she was frightened.
Low. High. Low.
I repeated them.
Nothing happened.
Lucio smiled.
“He does not know.”
I played the notes again, then added the rhythm of the words she used to say:
Poverty can empty your stomach, Aurelio, but never let it empty your soul.
The ceiling groaned.
The painted sun split open.
A small metal cylinder fell onto the stage.
Everyone moved at once.
Lucio lunged for it.
I kicked the cylinder beneath the piano.
Mateo’s men opened fire from the balconies. Valeria shot the guard holding Rafael’s wife. Rafael threw himself over Isabel as bullets tore through the curtain.
Esteban grabbed me.
He pressed a gun against my head and dragged me toward the stage exit.
“Tell them to stop!”
Mateo froze.
“Let him go.”
“You always cared too much about strays,” Esteban said.
“He is not a stray.”
“No. He is evidence.”
I saw the film cylinder near my foot.
Lucio crawled toward it.
Valeria saw him too.
She fired, but the bullet struck the floor.
Lucio snatched the cylinder and ran behind the curtain.
Esteban pulled me through the side door.
Outside, a motorcycle waited.
He shoved me onto it and climbed behind me.
Before he could start the engine, Rafael’s son appeared in the doorway.
The boy held a gun with both hands.
Esteban aimed at him.
I slammed my head backward into Esteban’s face.
The gun fired into the air.
I rolled from the motorcycle.
Mateo reached us seconds later.
Esteban escaped through an alley, leaving the motorcycle behind.
Inside the theater, Lucio had vanished with the film.
But Rafael’s wife and son were alive.
As Mateo helped me stand, Valeria emerged carrying something she had found beneath the piano.
A second cylinder.
The one Lucio had stolen was empty.
My grandmother had hidden a decoy.
We returned to the estate and developed the film in Mateo’s private laboratory.
The images showed bank accounts, police payments, and photographs of Esteban meeting government officials.
The final image was different.
It showed my mother holding me as a newborn.
Beside her stood Mateo Vargas.
On the back of the photograph, my grandmother had written:
Mateo knows who ordered Elena’s death.
May you like
Elena was my mother.
And Mateo had known her murderer for twelve years.
