by David Levien
“I need one,” Paul said.
THIRTY-TWO
FINDING A PLACE TO DRINK wasn’t difficult. They didn’t know Ciudad del Sol well, but all cities were the same basic mixture of humanity. They all had aspects of beauty and ugliness. All had at least one church and one jail. Paul and Behr had been there long enough to start to understand the geometry, and they found a bar on Calle Maria del Monte that served the local tequila out of clay gourds. It was a clear, fresh-tasting distillation that had salt and lime undertones, as well as some flavor of the clay in which it came. The first drink was had in silence. Paul quickly repoured.
“I tell you, I don’t like doing that shit.”
“I know, Frank.”
“You get to the point where you’re tired of being fucked around.”
“I can’t tell if you’re talking about the case and this trip, or life in general,” Paul wondered.
“I’m not sure, either.” They both laughed.
“I don’t know that the kid has information and was holding back,” Paul said over the rim of his glass.
“He knows something. Everybody does. And when they hold back it’s not always conscious.”
Paul realized that he was getting a lesson learned of years. They drank more. Behr had a distant expression in his eyes.
There was a row of men at the bar who wore paper-thin T-shirts streaked with ground-in dirt. Long hair shot out from beneath ball caps and straw hats. Their fingernails were ringed with black earth. They drank quickly and talked among themselves, and began drifting out before long.
Behr ordered another gourd of tequila. Paul started to go hazy, between the liquor and the fatigue, a more tolerable distance from the hard edges of reality. He let out a deep breath. It felt like it went on forever, like he’d been holding it in for a year. He reached for his wallet, but not to pay. He pulled out the photo of Jamie that he carried now. It was one of the last taken before he went missing. It was shot in their backyard. Jamie wore a red polo shirt and a half-smile. Paul felt his eyes burn into his son’s eyes in the photo. He wondered at the face, at what it would have become. After a while it was enough; he put away the photo and looked across at Behr.
Behr finished his glass and set it on the table. He reached for his own wallet. He flipped through several credit cards and business cards to where he kept it, his photo of Tim. He didn’t keep it on top. He couldn’t handle that kind of thorn on a daily basis. He looked down at his son, handsome in his blue sweater over a pale blue button-down shirt, standing in front of a felt background cloth, his hand posed unnaturally by the school photographer on a fence-rail prop. Behr looked at the photo for a long moment, then passed it to Paul, whose head bent over it reverentially.
“Tim, right,” Paul said.
Behr nodded. “His first-grade school portrait,” he began. “I still remember the day, even though he’s been gone longer than he was alive.” Behr poured himself another drink, his hand steady. “Linda had taken extra care in combing his hair and getting him ready. The class pictures were at nine thirty in the morning, and that was a good thing. By lunch Tim’s shirt would have been untucked, rumpled, the sweater in a ball at the bottom of his cubby, his hair a mess. By the time he came home he’d be grass-stained at best, if a piece of clothing wasn’t ripped outright. Linda told him every day to keep himself nice. It didn’t work. The day of the picture she’d told him at least twice and maybe because of that we ended up with that good a picture.”
Paul smiled and handed it back. Behr put it down on the table between them, unwilling as yet to return his son to his wallet crypt.
“You never told me how he died,” Paul said.
Behr straightened and spoke in a measured way. “I’d been on night watch. I was sleeping during the day. At the end of shift we’d go to Loader’s. A cop bar. They’d be opening for the day and we’d have a few pops. I’d been pulling overtime and it added to the exhaustion.” He knew he sounded like he was on the witness stand or giving a deposition; the dry facts were what he drew on to get through it the few times he’d told it aloud.
“It was funny, because I didn’t feel so tired that day when I got home, so I sat down on the couch and started watching sports highlights,” he continued. “I fell asleep there. The gunshot woke me up, and by the time I made it into the bedroom, blood was everywhere.” Now he had to pause, because the memory was twisting in him like a rusty knife. Bitterness overtook his measured testimonial.
“You don’t put your gun up proper one mother-fucking day, your lockbox isn’t closed tight, or your boy’s watched you open it one too many times and knows how to do it, and that’s what you motherfucking get.” Behr reached for his drink. They both saw the tremor in his hand then, and Behr pulled it back and put it under the table. “He was in a coma for three weeks before he died. Three goddamned weeks.” Horrible images played in his mind while he fought his uneven breathing.
“It would’ve ended quick with this.” He placed a hand, now stable, he thought, onto the tabletop. Beneath it was the black silhouette of his gun, the Bulldog .44. “In case of accident, or if you have to use it, you don’t want there to be any question. That’s my takeaway. How’s that for stupid?” Behr made the gun disappear and then his tequila. He tapped his wristwatch, a stainless steel Omega Speedmaster. “So this is the sum total of my family. Wife gave it to me for our fifth anniversary. It’s all that’s left. Guess it was better made.” There was a mad look on his face that he could feel and was sure Paul could see.
“Ah, Frank,” Paul said, unable to offer anything else.
“I’m drunk enough.” Behr stood.
The night was dark black. Whatever streetlamps there were in the town must have been uniformly broken or extinguished at a set time, as none of them threw any light. They made their way intuitively back toward their motel, turning down one street, rethinking it, turning back and going down another. They rounded a corner and walked along a long chain-link fence that surrounded a used-car lot they recognized from earlier in the day. Suddenly, a blur of black fur and white gnashing teeth came smashing against the fence. A pair of yellow-eyed guard dogs, growling low and throaty, had come out of the darkness and went after Behr and Paul. The animals bounced off the fence, only to lunge again. Paul had jumped back out of instinct while Behr had turned to face them. He hooked his fingers through the fence and let out a growl of his own, which was lower and more menacing than what the dogs had mustered. Behr’s hands on the fence gave the dogs ample opportunity to snap at him, but instead the dogs shrank back. They shimmied down on front paws and tried to put up another wall of growls. Behr began barking at them. He sounded like a deranged human mastiff. Paul stepped up next to him and grabbed the fence. He started barking, too, his sounding like a frenzied hyena’s. The real dogs, fear-ridden and confused, let out squeals and disappeared back into the darkness of the lot.
After their fingers had gone white from gripping, Behr let go of the fence and started laughing. Then Paul started in laughing, too. It came in waves. They snorted and howled, doubling over at the waist. Eventually whatever was funny about it petered out and there was only silence. They straightened and headed back to the motel, where sleep awaited, black and dreamless.
THIRTY-THREE
DON RAMON PONCETERRA TOOK LUNCH ALONE on his tiled veranda, the quiet bubbling of a small fountain and the occasional bird the only accompaniments to his meal. The camarones had been excellent, and as he forked sliced mango into his mouth, he considered the liver spots on the backs of his hands. When fall came Don Ramon would turn seventy years old, and while most of his contemporaries had gone fat and sedentary and bald, he was still slender and vigorous and had a fine head of silver hair. It was only the cursed spots on the backs of his hands, thickening into a brown pattern like the belly of a brook trout, which reminded him of his years. The sight disturbed him and conjured visions of the dark labyrinths of oblivion that awaited him if he did not act.
In his life as a busine
ssman he had made countless acquaintances. He had known landowners, merchants, traders, manufacturers, cattlemen, and the like, and each group thought Don Ramon a mere entrepreneur like them. Until he was in his midforties, that perception was entirely accurate. He was financially well off and scrupulously polite; an immaculate dresser; he had daughters and a son; he owned land, donated to the church, and was a sponsor of the fiesta.
But then the change came, his awakening. It coincided with his rereading of the classics and coming across the concept of the “philosopher-king,” as Socrates had put it. While that term was a bit grandiose for a modest man such as himself, Don Ramon recognized the truth in it. He discovered that a man could live his life by the highest precepts, even if a deteriorated society could not grasp them. Now, very few in the world truly knew him or understood how he remained so youthful in aspect. It was this secret of his that drew his thoughts to the rubio.
Many potros had come to him over the years. It would be impossible to remember all the boys. For most, the brevity of their stay, and their inevitably failing health, made a lasting relationship unlikely. It was quite sad. Still, there had been three who had become truly important to him. They had gone from the occupation of a few weeks to that of a few months to several years. Those three alone had had the potential to become true acolytes. As the ancient Greeks knew, the intellectual intercourse between learned men and the young boys in their charge, and the physical consummation of said relationships, was superior to any other bond. While many men thought women and the offspring they bore were the path to immortality, Don Ramon knew that the vitality that sprang from his mentorships was the true road.
But those three opportunities had passed bitterly. One of the catamites had perished by his own hand. Even now Don Ramon could remember the pale morning light in the room when he discovered the young man hanging by his bed sheet. The second, regrettably, had been a disciplinary accident. And the third, perhaps the most regrettable of all, had merely disappeared, escaping into the wind, never to be heard from again. He had probably perished in the desert. The distress these endings caused Don Ramon had almost been enough to discourage any further attachments. But then he felt the march of time and the cobwebbed fingers of death reaching out for him, and he knew that he needed to continue. The call to become the evolved, the truly Platonic man, would not quiet within him.
So a few years back he had begun the lengthy search for the next in a line of magical consorts who would keep him forever beyond the grave. Despite the establishment of a complex infrastructure (for the truth was that his gift in the organization of businesses was real, and even in this, a profit-generating enterprise was of paramount importance), and despite the dozens of spiders he had crawling all over the earth on his behalf, each working with great energy to bring him the special individual he sought, he had nearly given up hope of finding him. That is, until the rubio had been delivered unto him.
Don Ramon sipped his rioja. It was a bit sharp. He didn’t prefer his wines so young. Though he didn’t know the rubio‘s name, as he never learned their names, and he didn’t know where he was from, that information did not matter to him, either. He only knew that this one glowed. Some might have suggested that Don Ramon was blinded by the fair hair and fair complexion, but that was foolishness, the kind of superficial assumption that an uncomprehending world was all too happy to make. It was another, inner quality that this one possessed. Don Ramon had spent long hours sitting in the dark with the rubio. Conversation was difficult due to their languages, but beyond that, words were wholly beside the point. There was an aura one could feel from another that told the whole story. In this case the tale was one of eternity. Even when sitting in the same room, simply sharing the same air, he could feel the rubio‘s healing youth. Remaining chances were few, though. This time there could be no mistake. And so Don Ramon had been exceedingly cautious with him, saving him, waiting for the sign of acquiescence that would signal the beginning of the physical union that would heal him. It had been many months and he didn’t know how much longer he could wait. He had turned to several of the others for relief of his corporeal urges, and as always that had left him feeling incredibly youthful and vigorous, yet disgusted. He hadn’t wanted to spoil the rubio with that. No, with the rubio he needed nothing less than complete acceptance. If he could achieve this, Don Ramon felt he could truly live forever.
Don Ramon’s musings were interrupted by the arrival of another on the veranda. There was the telltale cough, whether an attempt at politeness or a chronic condition, Don Ramon was unable to tell. Then came the shuffling of feet on the tile, the sound of thin, cheap shoes. Don Ramon could only put the choice down to poor taste, as he certainly paid his employees well enough for them to buy quality goods. It was Esteban.
Esteban Carnera stepped out from around the potted plant and, seeing that the meal was finished, advanced.
“Don Ramon,” he began, his raspy voice scraping the adobe walls around the courtyard. Whatever he lacked in social graces, Esteban made up for in utility. He was tall and stringy-muscled like a fighting bantam and walked on the balls of his feet. His face was deeply pocked and scarred so that there was little value in his protecting his looks when it came to physical matters. Over time, Don Ramon had come to learn that this was of great advantage.
“Yes, Esteban.”
“There are men in town, going to all the places.”
“Yes?”
“They do not buy, they just look, and ask for other things.”
This in itself was not worrisome to Don Ramon. There were many kinds of clients and many ways in which they behaved.
“What kind of men? ¿Clientes?“
“No sé, Don Ramon. Ellos son gueros.“
THIRTY-FOUR
IT HAD BEEN TWO MORE DAYS of looking around, two more nights of drinking. They figured they had seen the last of Victor. Now Behr and Paul passed the day flat on their backs in their dingy motel room, drinking the dwindling water they’d brought, considering their diminishing funds, and watching a national soccer game that seemed to go on for hours and hours and hours on the minuscule television set. Their stomachs rumbled, but food was not an option.
“That mescal’s got some kick,” Paul said, not for the first time.
“Like a damn mule,” Behr agreed. They sent a halfhearted maid away and went in and out of sleep, interrupted by the chants and shouts of college kids across the motel engaging in a drinking game, turbo quarters or beer pong, it sounded like.
Finally the light coming in through the patchy curtain started turning color from bright yellow to pale and they began to stir.
“I’m hitting the shower,” Paul said, standing.
“I’ll go after you.”
There was a hammering at the door. They looked at each other and Behr got up. He put his gun at the small of his back in the waistband of his pants.
“¿Quién es?” he said.
“Policía,” came the answer. Behr swung the door open. There was a stout man in his mid-thirties standing there. He chewed tobacco and wore a straw cowboy hat, and he had a .45 on his hip. His partner waited back in the distance in a dirty patrol car.
“¿Sí?” Behr asked.
“We speak English,” the cop said, “it’s more easy.” Behr nodded.
“I am First Sergeant Guillermo Garcia. They call me ‘Gigi,’ or also, Fernando.” He patted his big gut and smiled. “Now tell me what are you here for in the ciudad?”
“For the tequila mostly, it seems.” Behr smiled, blanking the cop with his eyes.
“Tequila is good, huh?” It was clear Fernando wanted more.
“And to see the sights, of course,” Behr added.
“Maybe the girls, too?” Fernando said.
“Maybe. We haven’t decided,” Behr said. Now Fernando’s face changed.
“Ah, you know prostitution is illegal here? This is an important thing.”
“We didn’t know,” Paul said, from the bed.
&nbs
p; “Is that a fact?” Behr asked.
“Yes. A big crime,” Fernando said. “But it is possible to get a license. Then you do what you want.”
“Huh. Sounds like we need one,” Behr said, already reaching for his money roll. He kept it in his pocket as he peeled off a hundred-dollar bill wrapped around the outside. He handed the bill to Fernando.
“This is good. Now you have no problem,” Fernando said. “My boss will get his mordida — you know what I say?” Behr did, and it wasn’t because of his Spanish, but rather that almost everyone in law enforcement was familiar with the term. It translated to “little bite,” as in everyone up the chain took his. Behr had often wondered at the productivity that would result if all the organization and effort that went into the systemic corruption were applied to a useful enterprise. “Oh yeah, but this license,” Fernando held up the bill, “it expire tomorrow. Understand? If you stay, I got to come back.”
Behr just nodded.
“So then, have a good night,” Fernando said, and stepped back. Behr closed the door.
After a moment, Behr turned to Paul. “I was wondering when we’d have to deal with that. It’ll cost more next time. We’re pretty much out of time here.”
Paul absorbed this and hurried to the shower.
Around evening time they went to the café, which had become their usual place. They ate and then ordered coffee and waited. After a half hour Victor appeared in the doorway. If he held any ill will over the roughing he’d received, it didn’t show. Instead he whistled and waved, and Behr and Paul followed him out.
They walked quickly through the streets, cutting down a few back alleys. No one said anything, and they soon came upon a worn, mud-spattered Toyota pickup with a man resting on the hood. The man popped up at their approach. He was lithe and wiry, like a punk singer, an orangutan without the hair.
“This is Ernesto,” Victor said, “mi primo.“ Ernesto wore silver-framed glasses with blue lenses despite the darkness. The man slid off the truck and landed solidly on his feet. They shook hands with him.