‘I think so, let’s see if I remember …’
‘You have to discard sets of trumps or cards of the same value,’ he explains, ‘and if you think the other player’s lying you shout Bluff! The first person to get rid of all their cards wins.’
I call trumps: cups. Quique puts down three cards and picks up a card from the pack. He doesn’t look like he’s bluffing. Me, I’m lying like a politician. And he’s letting me. I’m down to only two cards when Quique shouts Bluff. He turns over my last card and I have to pick up the whole discard pile. We start again. Swords are trumps. I use a four to change suit to coins. It seems like a good idea since I picked up the discard pile, but it doesn’t turn out that way. Quique discards two, as if the trumps he didn’t have earlier have magically multiplied. He has only one card left. I call Bluff and Quique gives me a devious smile. He wasn’t lying. He had to be bluffing earlier, even when he picked a card up from the pile and looked disappointed. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. We keep playing and he keeps picking up cards and then on the fourth discard he wins the hand.
I’m annoyed now, so I start really playing, but it’s useless. Quique wins three hands in a row and just as I’m about to win the fourth, he snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. I’ve never been good at lying, which means when I do lie there’s a sort of logic to it. Quique’s lies are random and there’s no tic, no sign he’s doing it. It’s impossible to catch him at it because he always keeps a scrap of truth up his sleeve in case he’s challenged.
He’s more devious than I thought. The kid’s giving me lessons now, and that really does bust my balls. Then something occurs to me. Half an hour later the water for the mate is cold and I use that as an excuse to throw in the towel. It’s still overcast, but it’s stopped raining.
‘You hungry?’ I ask, putting the kettle on the hotplate again.
‘Bit.’
‘Why don’t you go and get yourself a choripán at Fat Farías’s place? I’ll give you a couple of pesos. Hang around with the other kids for a bit, keep your eyes peeled and your ears open, then come back later and tell me everything.’
‘Is this some kind of deal, Gringo?’
‘Some kind, yeah,’ I say and give him a five-peso note.
‘Done deal,’ he says, waving the money.
‘And I want to know everything. Who’s there, who goes in, who comes out … what they’re doing …’
‘You smoke, don’t you?’ he says just as I’m about to spark up my first cigarette of the day.
I give him a cigarette and Quique heads off.
I go outside and watch him walk down the street. The wet ground gleams like it’s wrapped in plastic. Quique moves slowly, avoiding the puddles so he doesn’t slip. The wind is still blowing hard. It’s cold.
DRAWING A BLANK
I PROWL THE house like a cat in a cage. There’s no reason for me to stay at home, but I’ve got nowhere to go either.
I pick up the whale book and sit in the kitchen reading. I grip the pages tightly so the money and the note with Toni’s address don’t fall out. That’s where I leave them. I still don’t know what I’m going to do.
I suspect Ishmael’s a bit of a queer, but I kinda like the guy anyway. While he’s waiting to get a position on a whaling ship, he spends a couple of nights at an inn in Nantucket. He shares a bed there with a wild man, a harpooner. A cannibal from the Pacific islands with tattoos all over his body. Queequeg his name is. This guy prays to a little wooden god he keeps in a box, and sleeps with his harpoon. It’s difficult to work out what the harpoon would look like, because Ishmael describes it as a huge tomahawk pipe. Thing is, Ishmael and the cannibal share a smoke, get friendly and maybe get frisky because the book says they’re like this cosy loving couple.
Eventually they find the Pequod, a whaling ship preparing to set sail, and they sign on. The bit about all the preparations goes on and on. Obviously, in those days, a ship could be at sea for years at a time, so you had to prepare for everything. If you ran out of salt or mate in the middle of the ocean, you were fucked. It’s not like you could pop down to the corner shop and buy some more. I suppose it makes sense but I’m getting a bit pissed off with all these preparations. I’ve been reading for over two hours and no one’s even mentioned a fucking whale.
My stomach starts to rumble, but I go on drinking mate. I can’t face food. I spark another cigarette and go on reading.
Anyway, finally, they set sail. The first week, the old captain – his name’s Ahab – doesn’t show his face. He spends all day every day shut up in his cabin. By the time he finally decides to come on deck under cover of darkness, they’re out on the open sea. He rants away on the poop deck for a while and throws his pipe overboard. The old guy’s fucked in the head. You can see it in his eyes, in his face. He’s got this scar that runs right across his face from his forehead to his jaw. Got it from an axe wound. And he’s got a peg leg. Made of ivory, Ishmael says. From the jawbone of a whale. Where were we? Anyway, the story is that Moby Dick, the great white whale, bit off his leg and the old guy is looking for revenge. He’s completely obsessed.
Another night, the old guy gathers all the crew on deck and gives this long speech, telling them they’re going to sail right round the world to find this whale if they have to. And he takes out a gold doubloon and nails it to the mainmast and promises it to the first sailor who sights the whale. Anyway, the crew go apeshit and they’re all up for hunting Moby Dick. All except one. Starbuck, the first mate, rebels and gets up in the old guy’s face. Ahab intimidates him and eventually the guy backs down. Ishmael makes him sound like a wimp, but I figure Starbuck is right. They’re out there to hunt whales, not just chase one particular whale round the world, and a motherfucker of a beast to boot. It’s all about making money. It’s not worth risking everything just so some old guy can get his revenge.
Anyway, just when the story’s getting good, Ishmael goes off on one. He’s done this to me two or three times already. Makes me want to wring his fucking neck. When they first set sail, he went into this whole riff about whaling and what life at sea is like. And when we meet old man Ahab for the first time, he started listing all the types of whale there are in the ocean: Greenland whales, sperm whales, killer whales and I don’t know what all. Now he’s going on about what colour Moby Dick is. It’s good on one hand, because you learn a lot of stuff. Like for instance that they boil whales and turn them into barrels of oil. Or that what brought in the most cash was whale spunk. Back when they didn’t have electricity, they used it in lamps like it was kerosene. What he doesn’t tell you is how the fuck they extracted the spunk. It’s not like they could give the whale a handjob … Be pretty difficult anyway, seeing as the whale would be dead.
Problem is, it takes him like twenty or thirty pages to tell you all this shit and you lose the thread of the story.
Anyway, at this point, Ishmael is banging on about the whiteness of the whale and talking so much bullshit you want to end the little fucker. According to him, what’s scary about Moby Dick isn’t the whale’s size, or the hulking wrecks of ships it leaves in its wake – what’s scary is the fact that it’s white as milk. He’s not freaked by the fact the whale’s a vicious motherfucker. What terrifies him is the opposite: that it looks so innocent. Pure as a baby lamb.
I give up on Ishmael’s ramblings and go hunting for something to snack on. But there’s nothing in the place. Half an onion, an empty pack of polenta and a packet of rice that’s almost full. I boil up a couple of handfuls of rice with the onion and eat it out of the saucepan. It burns my tongue and the roof of my mouth. With a bit of tuna or a tomato it would be tasty, but on its own it tastes of nothing. White rice is good for one thing and one thing only: killing your hunger.
I laugh at this, because it’s like Ishmael’s bullshit ramblings are rubbing off on me. My mind is blank. Like it’s full of smoke. All I can think about is white. I remember how blindingly white the Portuguese guy Oliveira’s house used to be in
the sunshine just after it had been whitewashed. It stayed that way for a while. Me and a bunch of kids used to sneak into his garden when he was having a siesta and eat his plums. We’d throw the maggoty ones against the wall. Some little shit even smeared DIRTY PORTUGUESE on the back wall in cowshit.
I think about Albino too, a bull mastiff that belonged to Zaid the Turk. Beautiful animal but vicious. Zaid always had him muzzled, but that didn’t stop the dog mauling every living thing it came across. Didn’t matter whether it had feathers, scales, fur or a baby’s dummy, Albino would go for it. Even Zaid, who fed him, wasn’t safe. The dog tried to chew his hand off a couple of times. He was seriously dangerous. But he made Zaid a packet in the dog fights. He was champion of Zavaleta. People would come for miles to see him fight. In the end he had to be put down. He chewed the arm off some kid in the barrio. It was lucky they managed to pull him off when they did, or he would’ve eaten the kid whole.
White was also the colour of our school smocks. Especially on Monday mornings when we’d show up all smart, hair combed, smocks freshly washed. The weird thing was the kids with the whitest smocks were usually the ones who were starving. It was like you could eliminate poverty with bleach, scrub out stigma with soap. Whiten it in the sun with salt and lemon juice if necessary. My school smock was only ever white until I got into a fight, and I got into fights pretty much every day. Later on, when some moron ripped one of the pockets and Mamina gave me a good slapping, I got in the habit of taking my smock off before lashing out.
I give up on Gringo’s ramblings too, as I swallow the last mouthful of rice, and I head out. It’s getting dark. It’s drizzling. Since Quique hasn’t come back to give me the lowdown, I head straight along the alley towards the station, cross the bridge over the riverbed and come out onto the narrow street by Fat Farías’s bar.
About fifty yards away from Farías’s place I see Quique hanging with a gang of kids. Five or six budding delinquents sitting under the eaves of Tita Cabrera’s shop sheltering from the rain, passing round a beer can. I know that what’s in the can isn’t beer, but still I say to the one cradling it in both hands, ‘Hey, give me a swig.’
‘A swig!’ shouts some kid sitting next to Quique who’s clearly off his face and that sets off a belated peal of laughter.
I humour them for a couple of minutes, then jerk my head for Quique to follow me. We move away a couple of feet and then suddenly I start coming on like a parish priest. Like a big brother. I regret it the minute I open my mouth.
‘What the fuck are you doing sniffing that? Smoke spliff if you want to. Don’t you know glue fucks up your brain cells?’
Quique looks at me seriously, closes one eye so he’s not seeing double, or triple, then with one finger he draws a circle in the air around my face then points it at my nose. I know this trick; you do it to get things to stand still when you’re tripping.
‘Life fucks up your brain cells, Gringo,’ he says in slow motion. ‘Quit busting my balls …’
I light a cigarette as he stands there, swaying on his feet, his bottom lip hanging down like a ventriloquist’s dummy. All that’s missing is the drool.
‘Find out anything for me?’
‘Something and nothing.’
‘What?’
‘Round noon Rubén and El Jetita had lunch with the police commissioner from Zavaleta,’ Quique says slowly, chewing every word, his tongue thick and furry. ‘Farías cooked an asado and the daughter served. Kicked everyone out of the bar – even El Negro Sosa, who got a bit mouthy, and that skinny guy who’s always hanging with Rubén.’
‘So what did they talk to the Fed about?’
‘No idea. You think they let me stick round for decoration?’
He’s right. Stupid fucking question. Though he’s talking in slow motion and his eyes are blank, Quique sounds more articulate than ever.
‘What else?’
‘In the middle of the afternoon, the Fed left and everyone else came back. El Jetita played cards with his mates and Chueco came by a couple of times to talk to him. The second time with that dark-haired girl he hangs with.’
‘Pampita?’
‘Yeah, that’s her. I didn’t see her come out.’
‘What about Chueco?’
‘Dunno.’ He scratches his head, closes his eyes like he’s concentrating. ‘He did some kind of deal with El Jetita, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were too far away. After that I saw him hanging around out here. Looked like he was dealing …’
‘Weed?’
‘Coke, too.’
‘You sure, Quique?’
‘What the fuck’s with you?’ he says to me. ‘It’s like your face is made of plasticine.’
‘So the other girl, she’s still in there?’ I say, changing the subject.
‘Who?’ he asks, confused.
‘Yanina.’
‘Nah, she fucked off about half an hour after the cop left.’
Quique closes his eyes again and brings a finger to his temple like he’s putting two and two together, or trying to work out some code. After everything he’s told me – ‘Something and nothing,’ he said – I’m starting to think sniffing glue has turned him into a prophet or a medium. I’m wired now and I ask him what he makes of everything.
‘What the fuck do I know, Gringo?’ he says. ‘My mind’s a fucking blank …’
And just as the prophet seems about to come out with a revelation, Quique spirals into glue psychosis and starts coming out with all sorts of shit, telling me that the puddles and the street lights have been sending him messages and they’re not good.
‘I just give you the gen. You have to work out the conclusions,’ he says finally.
And that’s the last more or less coherent thing I get out of him.
ON A MERRY-GO-ROUND
I CALL AND call. No one picks up. And when they do, I wind up talking to myself and the line goes dead. I put another coin in and get an engaged tone. Without hanging up, I dial again so the fucking phone doesn’t swallow the money, and when I finally get through I push another two coins into the slot. The last of the change from doing over Fat Farías, not counting the three big bills I’ve got stashed in the whale book.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Cristina?’
‘Who’s this?’
‘El Gringo, friend of Toni’s. Could you give him a message for me?’
‘Sure, shoot …’ I find it difficult to imagine her from her voice, but she seems like a girl who doesn’t bullshit.
‘Tell him “Mamina says you’re dead to her. She won’t say why, but I don’t like it. If we’re going to work together, I need to know what went down first.” Just say it like I said it. He’ll know what I mean.’
‘No sweat. He’s coming by tomorrow to pick up some alpaca, I’ll tell him then.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she says, polite but curt, and she hangs up.
The call didn’t even take a minute, but the phone doesn’t spit out any change. I give it a couple of whacks, but nothing. I’m about to kick it, when someone grabs my shoulder.
‘Hey, loco, cut it out! Don’t go fucking up the only payphone in the barrio! If there’s an emergency, someone’s going to have to run all the way to Zavaleta to call the fucking fire brigade …’
‘And since when did you start giving a shit?’ I say to Chueco, who’s standing behind me looking shifty.
‘Since we started playing with fire, loco,’ he says sarcastically. His eyes are glittering. But it’s not the hard glitter of coke. He looks drunk. ‘Where you been, Gringo? I’ve been waiting round for you all day. We’ve got a little job on …’
‘Well, let’s do it now,’ I play along, all friendly and shit, ‘after all, at night all cats are grey.’
‘Come on. Charly’s kids are headed down to the park by the station. I just saw them.’
‘I’m guessing you’re strapped?’
‘Too fucking right,’ he says, f
lashing me the butt of the gat sticking out of his belt.
We head straight down the street by the evangelical church, an old converted animal-feed warehouse decked out with neon lights. On Sunday nights the place is heaving. You can hear the pastor singing and shouting. The evangelicals pitched up in the barrio years ago now, but they’re still hunting for fools. Even Mamina, who’s no fool, was hooked for a while. But soon as they asked for money, she told them where to go.
Chueco can’t fucking shut up. He’s explaining stuff to me, telling me about his plans. How we’re well in now. We’ve fucked over El Jetita and got away with it, and when we get him to trust us, we’ll skewer the fucker big style. I play dumb. I nod and agree with everything he says but I’m not buying it. Chueco’s already fucked me over. He’s only in it for himself. When it comes down to it, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the one who got shafted instead of El Jetita.
As we come to the park, Chueco asks, like he doesn’t give a shit, ‘Che, Gringo, you been in touch with Toni?’
My head starts spinning like a busted merry-go-round, the little wooden horses flying off as it whirls. I don’t like coincidences. Never did. I don’t like them because I don’t believe in them. Either Chueco was listening in while I was on the phone or whatever’s going down is more complicated than I thought.
‘No, why?’ I play dumb again.
‘Nothing … El Jetita asked about him this morning and I said I’d ask you. Turns out Toni was one of his men until things got fucked up, and now he wants to bring him back into the gang.’
‘I thought Toni got himself killed?’
‘No, that’s bullshit,’ Chueco explains. ‘El Jetita says the fool’s doing arts and crafts somewhere out in the Delta.’
The whole conversation rings about as true as a 32-peso piece. I don’t know who’s the bigger fool in all this, me or him.
‘So why not just ask me himself, instead of getting you to do it?’
‘What do I know … ?’ He dodges the question. ‘You know El Jetita, he’s weird as fuck.’
Seven Ways to Kill a Cat Page 8