by Matt Whyman
There are plenty of good times to be had here as well, particularly on the pitch, and lately I’ve noticed that we have the most beautiful girls in the world.
Mountains also surround our city, and that can’t fail to lift the spirits. From the roof of my apartment block, looking out over washing-lines and TV aerials, you get a clear view of forested slopes and gullies, even snow-caps sometimes. We spent a lot of time on that roof, Alberto and me. Nobody could touch us there, and we could only be seen from the sky. It’s also where we hid the packs of cigarettes skimmed from Galán, and learned to smoke like soldiers.
‘Some day we’ll get to the top,’ Alberto once said to me, and flicked his dog end as if it might make it to the looming summit. ‘We’ll steal ourselves some motorbikes and take ourselves all the way up there. I’ve always wondered what it looks like on the other side.’
The money we made from Galán wouldn’t get us far. That miser always haggled with us whenever we returned with the goods, which was why we skimmed the smokes. Even so, we always accepted more runs from him. We were ten years old when we started out, and though he paid us peanuts it seemed a lot to boys like us. We weren’t exactly made of money, after all. We came from EI Diamante in the southern quarter: a poor part of an impoverished city, but not the worst. Without work, we would’ve been forced out beyond the slums and the shanties, to the garbage heaps in the hills. My mother would’ve raged and wept at this, just as she did soon after El Fantasma found me, but I had to pay my way. That was the understanding, maybe not with her but certainly with Uncle Jairo. I’ve seen those skinny thieves up there, competing with the vultures for food and trinkets, and I realise how lucky I am. I earn some money, but a great deal more in respect. Nobody calls me Shorty outside of the compound, and our neighbours quit telling dirty lies about my mother some time ago. They know what I can do, and wisely they leave us in peace.
Without Alberto, most probably I would be picking through the trash already. I may not play by the same tactics as my friend: on or off the soccer pitch, I don’t run with the ball until someone takes me down, but I have learned to make my mark. Sure, he had some weight to throw around, but it doesn’t matter how you shape up on the outside. It’s courage that counts, and Alberto brought that out in me when we decided Galán should pay for ripping us off.
‘The sonofabitch treats us like kids,’ he moaned, and spat on the ground between his feet.
‘That’s because we are kids, Alberto. Face it.’
‘But we’re doing a man’s job. Guys three times our age run cigarettes and get a bigger cut for it. Why should we settle for coins? It isn’t right! We should show him, Sonny. We should make him pay. If we don’t get the respect, soon everyone will treat us like bitches.’
Alberto and I had always steered clear of trouble. We left that kind of thing to the rival gangs, let them square up to each other while we got on with living. Now my friend had landed me with little choice. I didn’t want him to think I was a coward, just as I hated the idea that Galán might be laughing behind our backs. The plan we cooked up seemed like a quick and simple way to save face. I wasn’t going in alone, after all. Alberto would be with me every step of the way.
You should’ve seen the pair of us, crossing to his store with our shoulders squared and faces set. I closed in on the door first, mainly to hide the fact that Alberto was clutching a baseball bat. He told me he had borrowed it from a neighbour in our block. I figured that meant he had stolen it, and was lucky not to have been caught. In this city, a bat was for protection only.
‘Are you sure about this, Alberto?’
‘Keep moving, man,’ I heard him hiss, sounding supercharged. ‘Don’t stop now.’
We were here to do business, not run stupid errands, and if Galán didn’t see reason then we would make a mess of his store. Privately I didn’t think it would come to that. I figured he might even admire us for standing up for ourselves, and agree to the wage we deserved.
What we hadn’t considered was that Galán would have company: some skinny guy with his hood up and his back to us, facing him across the counter. It was cooler inside, out of the sun, but it didn’t stop my skin from prickling. The contrabandista looked up at me without moving a muscle, which seemed odd and even alarming. Then I saw that the skinny guy was holding a switchblade to the soft part of Galán’s throat, and I froze just like him.
3
One glimpse of the blade and I pulled up, almost backtracked. We’d walked into a robbery, but as the skinny guy was across at the counter we had a chance to walk right out again. I was about to spin on my heels, but the door I had just pushed open hit the stopper with a bang. The guy twisted around at the waist: pasty-faced inside that hood, with eyes that darted between us.
‘Scram!’ For a moment, he snatched the knife away and showed it to us. I thought the storekeeper might come over the counter at him, but his gaze just followed the blade back to his throat. ‘Go home, little boys.’
We were nothing to him. Two kids come in for provisions, sent here by our mothers most probably. That’s how it must’ve seemed, which gave Alberto a big advantage when he shoved me aside, already bringing the bat around with both hands … whump! The guy took the hit in the stomach, and almost folded over. His head appeared to pop out of his hood, a look of shock and horror in his face, while the breath left his lungs in an awful bark. Alberto snapped the bat away and he just crumpled. It was his jaw that took the full force of a second blow – this time from an upswing. His head snapped back too far, spittle flying high, but Alberto hadn’t finished. As the guy went down, he began to kick and stomp on him as if this was a fire that had to be put out.
‘Enough, stop now!’
The voice seemed to come out of nowhere. I barely recognised it as my own, but somehow it got through to my friend. Alberto stood back, panting, and the bat just dropped from his hand. Galán remained frozen behind the counter, staring wide-eyed at Alberto – this express train that had come through his door.
‘Mother of Christ,’ he breathed, ‘what have you done?’
The guy on the tiles was making an unholy mewling noise now. Even when he seemed to run out of air it just went on and on. His head was half turned inside the hood, and the side of his face that I could see was bloody and out of shape. He was sprawled on his back with one arm flung backwards, the blade resting uselessly in the palm of his hand. For a moment I thought he was trying to say something. I saw his lips part, and that’s when I found his line of sight. I could’ve been looking at one of the fish we used to land, all the life left in it sealed inside one eye. He was easily into his twenties but seemed younger than me just then: nothing more than a terrified little street punk who didn’t want any of this. Then the noise he was making trailed away and I watched his gaze fall slack.
I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t speak or breathe. I just stood there with my hand across my mouth, wishing we had never come into the goddamn store. Minutes earlier, we had stood in the alley round the back, pumping ourselves up, but not for this. Outside, people went about their business. The sun was shining, and swifts could be heard twittering from the telegraph wires. The barrio was always a busy place, and nothing had changed that now. The only difference was how still and silent it was here in the store.
‘Is he dead?’ This was Alberto. He sounded all slowed down, like a tape-player running on old batteries.
‘He will be.’ Galán reached for the telephone on the shelf behind him and dialed out a number from memory. With the receiver lodged between his shoulder and his ear, he turned to the drawer under his cash register and drew out a large cigar. Just like that. Not even a glance back at the body on his floor.
‘What now?’ I asked, trying hard not to let my legs give way. I felt sick, as if I had just breathed in something evil.
‘What do you think, “what now”?’ Galán paused to fire up his cigar. ‘What now is this prick goes to Hell.’ He broke off there, greeted whoever it was who’d picked up the
call. The way he turned away with the receiver, I realised it was meant to be private. I Iooked at Alberto. He was still just standing there, struck dumb it seemed to me. I reached out and touched his arm.
‘It’ll be all right, man.’ I said weakly, and cleared my throat before trying again. ‘Everything will be good again.’
‘Hey, fellas!’ Galán broke off from his call, sounding cross with us all of a sudden. ‘Will you move him into the back room? C’mon, what are you waiting for?’
Obediently, Alberto dipped down and grabbed the guy by his ankles. I had no idea what was going through his mind. I was just glad to see him moving. I took his wrists and together we hauled the body across the tiles. Galán continued to chatter on the phone. As we reached the door behind the counter he cut us a frown. It was as if we were dealing with a sack of rotten watermelons here, messing up the tiles. I looked straight ahead all the way through, hoping and praying that this terrible weight between us wouldn’t suddenly twitch or make any more noise.
Later, when the flatbed truck pulled up outside the store, followed by a silver 4×4, I would hope and pray that he really was as dead as can be. Galán had hurried us from the building just as soon as the body and the bat were out of sight. As we left he kept saying that we should go home and tell no one.
‘This didn’t happen,’ was his final word to us, and at the time I almost believed him.
Leaving the store was like waking from a bad dream. The air seemed so fresh that Alberto and I just stood in the street for a beat and breathed. We both turned with a start when Galán shot the bolt across the door. He flattened his lips at us, there behind the glass, and then flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED.
We didn’t go home, of course. We took the fire-stairs round the back of our building, and headed straight for the roof. There, we sat against the old extractor hood and smoked some cigarettes. Every now and then, one of us broke the silence with a cough or a muttered ‘mierda,’ but we never looked at each other for more than a moment. I didn’t want to see what was going on behind Alberto’s eyes, and I was scared for him to see into mine. We only stirred when the truck turned up with the big jeep behind it, and that’s when it seemed very real. Peeking over the parapet, we saw two brawny guys climb out of the flatbed and haul a tarpaulin roll off the back. They could’ve been anyone, a couple of rough hands like almost every other migrant in this barrio, but the man from the 4×4 didn’t fit. He was wearing a light suit, white sneakers and shades, and moved like someone who didn’t like to dwell too long in one place. I was sure he was going to peel off those glasses and look directly up at us. Instead, the two goons carried the tarpaulin into the alley beside the store and the man followed behind. A side door opened up and we watched him hustle them in, looking left and then right before disappearing from sight.
‘Galán wasn’t lying,’ Alberto whispered, as if he might be heard even from here. ‘He really is connected after all.’
4
There are two types of people in this city: the poor who scratch a living on street level, and those who have turned to the underworld to survive. Not everyone does so willingly, of course. For every drug don there are dozens of everyday citizens who have decided that it’s better to accept a bribe than see their loved ones go missing. The cops and the judges may be decent people at heart, but with that kind of choice it’s no wonder so many take the money. Most of the time you can’t tell who has links and who needs some.
We always thought Galán was a bullshitter until he made that call, but it seemed Alberto was right. You only had to look at the party who came to collect the body to know where they had come from. These guys were gangsters. Not just street hoods grouped together for safety, but the kind who pulled all the strings in this city. Watching them leave the store from the front, with that tarpaulin roll looking a little heavier now, I felt both terror and awe. They left as quickly as they had arrived, with no fuss or fanfare. Galán waited for the silver jeep to pull away after the flatbed, and then flipped the store sign to show that he was back in business.
The events of that afternoon went down deep for us both. It became a part of who we were. We never once relived what had happened in that store, and I didn’t ask my friend how it felt to kill a man. I figured it was probably the same for him as it was for me: something that we couldn’t talk about because neither of us knew where to start. At first we spent a lot of the time not saying very much at all, just hanging out together, but as each day passed we found our tongues again. When our money ran short we even went back to the store. What’s more, Galán began to pay us the extra we had wanted for every carton of cigarettes delivered. He even trusted us with unmarked packages and packets, and stopped shooing us away whenever the phone rang. A few weeks later, it became clear that he had spoken highly of us both. For that’s how El Fantasma came into our lives.
I had never heard of the man when Alberto mentioned his name. Even so, it was clear by his gift to my friend that he had influence and power.
‘What do you think of me now, eh?’ Alberto was standing square to me on the roof, as if preparing for a showdown. ‘Isn’t she something?’
‘It’s a gun,’ I stated, half laughing.’ It isn’t real though, is it?’
Alberto stood down, invited me over for a closer look. It was black, silver and stubby. A semi-automatic, I knew that much. I had seen gang members make it obvious when they were carrying, and on instinct I always stayed clear. I was never scared, just cautious, but now here I was up on the roof with my very best friend. I just couldn’t keep my distance from him, even with this weapon between us.
‘Take a look at her,’ he said, again like it was a girl, and showed me the magazine. I got a glimpse of the bullets racked up inside before he slammed it back into the grip. He seemed very confident, as if someone had shown him how to handle himself. ‘She’s a Smith and Wesson,’ he told me. ‘A real beauty.’ I watched him weigh the pistol in his palm, wondering where this woman talk had come from. Then his fingers curled around the grip and trigger, and I found myself directly in his line of sight. ‘On your knees, now.’
I looked up smartly, grinning because Alberto’s voice had cracked when he said this, and a cry died in my throat. He was pointing the gun right at me, not finding this funny at all. His eyes narrowed into slits, only to finish it as suddenly as it had started by cocking his elbow so the gun was out of my face. I breathed out and thought I would never stop.
‘Jesus, Sonny.’ Alberto melted into a loopy grin. ‘You just messed your pants!’
‘No, I did not!’ My knees felt like curls of butter, but I also felt stung and that kept me on my feet. Alberto was my friend and friends did not pull stunts like this. ‘What’s going on, brother? Where did you get the money for a goddamn gun?’
‘Didn’t cost me a single peso.’ He reached for his back pocket now, pulled out five ten-dollar bills. ‘This guy paid me to look after it for him.’
‘In dollars? No way!’ I was beginning to get that sick feeling in the pit of my guts once more. American currency wasn’t supposed to be good here. You couldn’t spend it in the shopping malls, but then it bought you a lot on the streets. Everyone knew how it had come into the country, of course, which is why it was also worth a great deal in respect. ‘Come on,’ I pressed him again. ‘What fool was dumb enough to tool you up?’
Alberto gestured over the edge of the building, to the store on the opposite side of the street. We were supposed to work as a team for Galán. I had never been in there alone, and when I thought about what he meant I felt a bit betrayed.
‘Our infamous contrabandista called me over this morning,’ he explained. ‘Said an associate would be visiting him in the hour who wanted to talk to me’
‘And give you a loaded piece,’ I cut in. ‘A kid like you, just like that? C’mon!’
‘I swear it on my life, Sonny! I feel like a bandido, man. The real deal.’
I frowned, wishing he would wise up, but still couldn’t help th
inking he should’ve waited for me. I had been helping Uncle Jairo all morning, acting like his second walking stick while we shopped for groceries. Alberto didn’t have the same kind of ties. His mother pretty much lived in the textile factory where she worked several shifts from dawn to dusk, while his sister spent her days at college. He never really talked about any other family, but then I was only interested in the one I sometimes saw clutching text books to her breast.
Beatriz was sixteen, four years older than Alberto and the family’s shining star. She had the brains where he had the brawn, and everyone said that one day she would be a doctor. Their father passed away many years earlier. His death had been slow and certain, a cancer of the blood that reached his liver. He had insisted that Beatriz did not abandon her studies for him, and so it fell upon her little brother to nurse him during the day so his mother could continue to provide. It meant the two of them were confined to a house that felt more like a waiting-room. With time on their hands, Alberto’s father chose to fill it by schooling him in something, even if it was just stories.
In particular, Alberto loved to hear about the bandidos, and I wasn’t surprised that the gun had reminded him of them. These were outlaws who had become folk heroes – men such as Sangranegra, Desquite and Guadalupe Salcedo – all of whom had earned their reputation during La Violencia. Each commanded a band of thieves – ruthless renegades who ran rings around what was left of the establishment and stole a place in the hearts of the poor. As his father’s end drew near, however, Alberto confided in me that he was beginning to suspect some of the tales he heard seemed so rich in feeling and finish that they had to be confessions. I told him, don’t be dumb. His papa would’ve been a kid our age when these guys roamed the hills, but Alberto seemed to cling to the belief that he was the son of someone very special.