BY FRANCES ROBLES

 MASAYA, Nicaragua -- Carlos Iván Hüeck, who once washed dishes at a T.G.I. Friday's in Miami, is the new mayor of this town, and he often sits alone at night in his City Hall office, listening to the walls talk.

 He hears the voice of his legendary grandfather Cornelio, scolding him as a child, forcing him to stand still for an hour beside the pillars that supported their majestic
 home. By morning, when the daydreams are gone and the workday begins, those same concrete columns are surrounded with dozens of townspeople pleading for
 medicine, homes and jobs.

 "I came full circle,'' Hüeck says. "This is a victory for my family.''

 You see, the City Hall Hüeck now occupies as mayor used to be the family homestead. The colonial-era mansion from which he fled the 1979 Sandinista revolution was confiscated and turned into town hall. His desk sits in the old dining room.

 And his grandfather, the former head of Nicaragua's legislature under Anastasio Somoza, was disgraced and murdered -- shot and buried in a deep ditch.

 Now Hüeck, 40 and recently elected, wants to clear his family's battered name. He wants to put this town, situated 10 miles southeast of the capital, on a worldwide map. And, of course, he would like to get the house back.

 ``We have to get it back,'' he said. ``We left by force. It wasn't by choice.''

 In the 1970s, Cornelio Hüeck was the second-most powerful man in Nicaragua, a devoted ``Somocista,'' as the followers of the late President Anastasio Somoza were called. Accused of murder and shady land deals, Cornelio Hüeck shuffled his family out of the country one night. He stayed behind to face the leftist revolution.

 ``Maybe he thought it was just another war,'' Hüeck said. ``The Sandinistas will tell you he was so greedy that he'd rather die than lose what he had. I think he was just stubborn.''

 His children and grandchildren, among them Carlos, found safe harbor in Miami. At age 19, Carlos got a job washing dishes at a T.G.I. Friday's -- as terrible things befell his grandfather in Nicaragua. Kidnapped at night, he was taken from his farm in socks and pajamas. His body wasn't found until 1994, his hands still tied with nylon rope and his heart medicine still neatly placed in his embroidered front pocket.

 By then Carlos was an electronics salesman in Miami. When the Hüeck family returned to Nicaragua to bury its patriarch, Carlos pretty much came home for good. What he planned as a two-week vacation lasted quite a stretch.

 "I felt comfortable, so at home,'' Hüeck said. "It felt so good. I felt exactly like I just put on my oldest shoes, you know, those perfect shoes.''

 Educated in Kansas and Georgia, Hüeck began working in small business enterprises. Last year, Hüeck did exactly what his mother begged him not to. He delved into the family dynasty: politics. He ran for mayor of Masaya, a city of about 130,000 -- including 1,058 shoemakers, 286 wood shops, 200 hammock makers, and a 300-meter volcano.

 Hüeck still battles the whispers that his grandfather was a killer, the man behind the murder of newspaper publisher Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. He firmly denies his
 grandfather's involvement, and has a hard time reconciling the image of the abuelo he loved and the politician others despised.

 ``Cornelio Hüeck was the right-hand man of Somoza. He was the king of the court system in Nicaragua,'' said Chamorro's son, journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro. ``My father was a victim of that,'' he said. But ``I think it's an expression of the local politics of Masaya that Carlos Hüeck would be elected mayor. During the mayoral campaign, nobody made his grandfather a political issue. A grandson is not responsible for the actions of his grandfather.''

 Hüeck makes no secret of his aspirations, saying he wants to build his way up the governmental ladder. Asked whether he wants to be president, he smiles. ``Why not vice president?'' he said.

 Looking around the dining room-turned-government office, Hüeck vows to make his family proud.

 "I came back home through the front door after winning an election -- a popular election,'' he said. "The people of this town told me, 'You're not from a bad family. You're from a good family, and we're going to give you a chance to prove it.' ''