He doesn’t say anything. He comes over, hugs me and pats me on the back. Like we haven’t clapped eyes on each other for fucking years. I feel embarrassed. I feel my face crumple like I’m about to cry, but I don’t want him to see me go to pieces. I hug him hard then quickly light a cigarette. I give him one.
Quique smokes it slowly, staring at the ground. A rotting carpet of leaves, twigs and garbage. He looks up at me and says, ‘There’s some guy been looking for you since yesterday …’
‘Who?’
‘No fucking clue. He’s not from the barrio. He’s some rocker with a bunch of scars on his face.’ Quique drops the cigarette butt, stamps it out and carries on, looking intrigued. ‘Whoever the dude is, he’s fucking weird. He says he’s got a message for you from Toni.’
‘And you haven’t seen Toni around?’ I ask, fumbling to get another cigarette out of the packet, but it’s difficult because the cigarettes are trembling harder than the bullets earlier. At least this time I don’t have to load them into a chamber. I’ll be happy just to get one out of the pack. When I finally manage, I give the pack to Quique and he has no problem fishing one out. He’s the one who gives me a light. I can’t get the fucking lighter to work.
‘I dunno, Gringo … I never met the guy.’
‘Sure you met him, you just don’t remember. You were a kid at the time …’
Quique stares at me and shrugs. He’s right. Doesn’t matter if he ever met Toni or not. I try to think, but I’m so parched I can’t.
‘So where is this guy?’
‘At Zaid’s place. I told him to wait for me there, said I’d try and track you down.’
‘And how the fuck am I supposed to get there?’ I ask, thinking about the litre of beer I’ll neck soon as I get to the Turk’s place.
‘Long as you’re sneaky and you don’t go near the station, you’ll be fine. Silva and Medusa have staked out the square in front of the station, they’re not going to let this go … They’re fucking psycho. Some of the kids said they’re even looking for me.’
Quique heaves a sigh and lies back on the ground, arms folded behind his head. Closes his eyes. He’s pale. He looks five or six years older. He looks like a plaster statue. Or a corpse.
‘You look wrecked … You sleep?’
‘A couple of hours, maybe.’
‘Where did you spend the night?’ I ask, putting my bag behind my head as a pillow and lying back.
‘At Mamina’s.’
‘And you got in and out without anyone seeing?’
‘Yeah, they fucked off sometime in the middle of the night. There was nothing happening and they got bored hanging round,’ he explains.
‘So did you see Mamina?’
‘She didn’t come back.’ Quique clicks his tongue and curses under his breath. ‘… neither did my mamá.’
‘You still worried about your sister?’ I say, and I don’t know why, but I think about the maggoty doll.
Quique opens his eyes, turns and flashes me a dirty look.
‘You think?’ he says and closes his eyes again, and I feel like a shit.
‘Fuck you … how is this my fault?’ I think, but I don’t say it. For a while neither of us says anything. I listen to him breathing. Calm now. Like he’s asleep. I can’t sleep. The fear is eating me up inside.
‘So what do we do, Gringo?’ he asks unexpectedly, sitting up again.
‘Well, I’m getting the fuck out of here. No way I’m sticking around so they can cap me. You want to come with me, that’s up to you.’
Quique opens his mouth. He hesitates. He looks at me, hard as stone.
‘That’s sweet, loco, that’s cool. And how you planning to get gone? Take the four o’clock train?’ he says. ‘I mean, you could always ask Medusa and El Negrito to do you a solid, stop the 4.25 express. Throw a sleeper across the tracks like the railway workers did the day of the general strike and bye-bye. No, I’ve got a better idea … Why don’t you walk to Zavaleta, ask one of Charly’s boys to pay for a cab. What d’you think?’ To rub it in, he gives me a serious look like he’s expecting me to pick one of these options.
Turns out even Quique is taking the piss out of me now. The kid is frantic. And I don’t blame him. If this shit is too much for me, it’s a whole lot worse for him. Besides, I suppose maybe I sounded a bit harsh.
‘I’ll pay my own cab, papá. I’ve got more than enough cash,’ I say, taking a fistful of bills from the bag. ‘Here, go find Santi and give him this.’ I make the big bills into a wad and hand it to him. It’s a lot of cash, but I don’t count it. If I can’t buy my way out of this shit, I doubt I’ll get a chance to splash the cash later.
Quique takes the money with kid gloves. Like there’s shit on it, like he might catch scabies. A crumpled bill falls away. He picks it up and puts it with the others, never taking his eyes off me. Hardcore.
‘Tell him to swing by the Turk’s place at midnight. Tell him if he drives me down to Retiro in his Chevy, I’ll give him the same again.’
Quique scratches his head. He digs his shoes into the ground. He’s got them properly laced up now. Long laces tied twice around his ankles.
‘He’s not gonna give you a ride …’ he says, and sighs like he’s telling his kid sister there’s no Santa Claus. ‘The guy’s shitting himself, there’s no way he’d risk it. Charly’s people know about the Chevy. Any suspicious move, he knows they’ll end him. Besides, how can he take you if the road’s blocked? There’s a shitload of Feds at the crossroads outside Zavaleta, something about the teachers’ strike or the unemployed … The whole thing’s a clusterfuck …’
‘So what? We go round by the refinery, or take the old road: if Santi’s up for it, I don’t see the problem. Just take him the money, tell him what I told you. What, you think he’s chicken?’
‘He won’t do it, Gringo.’
‘Just listen to me and stop bitching. I’m telling you, he’ll be well up for it.’
Quique heaves a sigh, rubs his eyes. He’s not convinced. Neither am I, but it’s the only escape route I’ve got left.
‘Go on, loco, make like the Duracell bunny and fuck off,’ I say. ‘Once we get to Retiro, we can swing by the children’s hospital if you want. I know the way,’ I lie, taking advantage of the fact his kid sister’s sick. Keeping company with the local rats is clearly having an effect on me. All I need is a tail and I’d be one of them.
Quique looks at me for a second, then he says we might as well try and he leaves. I shout after him to give me a whistle if he spots anything dodgy on his way back to Zaid’s place, and I wait. I wait too long, because Quique’s warning never comes and, instead of getting my arse in gear, I sit there thinking about Chueco. And the arsehole who was tormenting me a while back shows up again and starts busting my balls. Before I realise, I’m talking to the dead like it was nothing weird.
‘Be careful what you’re doing,’ I tell Chueco. ‘Don’t fuck up …’
FANTASY FICTION
‘OH, IT’S YOU. Yeah, I remember …’ says Piti, one of Toni’s friends. ‘You showed up at Lezama Park the other day with a copy of Moby Dick under your arm …’
I agree with my eyes. A slight, slow blink. I’ve got my mouth full, my lips round the top of a bottle. And I can’t nod, because I’ve got my head back so I can neck a litre of beer in one go.
It took him a minute before he recognised me. I had the advantage because I spotted him straight off. He’s got the kind of face you don’t forget in a hurry. Covered in scars and pockmarks. He’s ugly as a hatful of arseholes.
‘So? How’s it going with the whale?’
‘Piece of shit, that book,’ I say, scanning the street. Suspicious.
No one’s coming up from the river, and on the other side there’s only a stray dog. I’m not the only one who’s worried. Zaid the Turk is peering anxiously through the bars of his stall. All this shooting has finally shaken him out of his apathy, which means that fucking photo of his dog gets a break from ha
ving to deal with the weight of his guilt. At least this shit has done something positive – it’s given Zaid something else to obsess about. I can’t get my head round someone obsessing over a fucking photograph. I don’t care if it’s a photo of a missing kid or his mother who betrayed him. I feel sorry for the guy, because if he wants to throw a pity party, he doesn’t need bad memories to do it. I don’t do memories, good or bad. I can’t be dealing with the past. But I’m being well and truly burned by the present. The fear, the dread, and all the beer in the world isn’t going to put that fire out.
‘What you saying, dude? Moby Dick is a complete fucking trip!’ Piti says.
‘It’s a bunch of bullshit, and if you don’t want to believe it, that’s your problem.’
‘Fuck sake, dude, you just don’t get it!’
Piti looks at me smugly. He takes a swig of beer, hands me back the bottle and sparks up a cigarette. He studies me for a bit longer as he takes the first couple of puffs, then launches into a big lecture waving his cigarette like a pointer, like he’s some professor. He gives me this whole spiel about the human condition, the hell of madness, the nature of evil and I don’t know what all, and every couple of minutes he tells me that the whale doesn’t really exist, that it’s a metaphor for something that, if the whale didn’t exist, would be nameless.
I let him ramble on, finish the beer and ask the Turk for another. The minute I see Piti’s running out of steam, I cut in.
‘You done?’
‘More or less, loco, but I’m still not sure you get the book.’
‘Metaphor my arse, you’re the one who doesn’t get it. All this horseshit is like some stoner tells you he’s seen the face of the devil. It’s bull … If someone really saw the devil, he wouldn’t come out with shit about horns and hooves, nobody believes it. If he really saw the devil he’d wind up putting a bullet in his head or a needle in his arm, or he’d end up in a rubber room in some nuthouse.’
Piti pulls a face, gives me this smug smile. I go on talking so as not to end up smashing his fucking face.
‘This whole story about the whale is a total crock too. We’re supposed to believe anyone who goes after Moby Dick never comes back. So what about Ishmael? He was there and he came back, didn’t he? The writer’s a bullshit artist. He cheats. Far as I’m concerned, if it ended with Ishmael at the bottom of the sea with old Ahab, with the little fishies eating his eyes, it would have made more sense. If you’re going to bullshit, at least make it convincing. Otherwise shut your arse.’
Piti lights another cigarette. He toys with the bottle, takes a couple of swigs, and tells me there’s no way the plot of Moby Dick could turn out like that because that would be fantasy literature whereas Melville – that’s the name of the guy who wrote the book, he reminds me – Melville’s all about literary realism.
‘Tell me something, professor,’ I interrupt him. ‘Did you come all this way to chat literature? Quit busting my balls about literary fucking realism.’
‘Nuh-huh, dude,’ he says gruffly. ‘Toni sent me to give you a couple of messages.’
‘Why didn’t he come and tell me himself ?’
‘Ask him yourself, dude.’ The guy clearly doesn’t like being a messenger boy. And he sure as fuck doesn’t like me reminding him he’s one. ‘Toni’s waiting for you up in Zavaleta. Says not to believe the shit you’ve heard, says he had nothing to do with what happened to your old woman. Says you need to get the fuck out of the barrio asap. Charly’s going to do a little ethnic cleansing, so there won’t be much left standing.’
The air I’m breathing runs out of oxygen. I’m suffocating. The third gulp I take is a thick, smoggy hit that jolts my brain with a clarity I’ve never felt before. How the fuck does Toni know I’m after him to find out about my mother? All I told him was Mamina wanted nothing to do with him and that if I was going to go work with him, I needed to know what had gone down between the two of them. He’s hiding something. You start pleading innocent before you’ve been accused, you’re fucking guilty. Right now, the last thing I want is to know what really went down. It doesn’t matter any more.
It’s not like we were really close, but Toni was always like a brother to me … Deliberately or not, he betrayed me, he left me in the lurch. Left me an orphan. Someone’s got to pay for that.
The sudden fever I feel calms me and cranks me up. I’m dead. Just like Chueco.
‘Tell him I can’t go up there, because someone will cap me,’ I say to Piti coolly. ‘If he wants to get me out of this shit, he’ll have to come down here.’
Piti stares at me incredulous and shrugs his shoulders.
‘I can’t see that happening, dude. Your people are a bit amped right now. Someone pulled a gun on me at the station. By some miracle, I got away with my shoes, but they took every peso I had. If that’s how they treat strangers, I wouldn’t like to imagine how they’d treat the prodigal son.’ Piti finishes his beer, spits and concludes. ‘Look, I’ve given you the message. If you like, I’ll take a message back from you, but trust me on this, I don’t think Toni’s going to risk coming down here.’
I drag my bag up and sit on it next to Piti, spark up my nth cigarette and launch into an explanation. I’m calm, unruffled, like a good little boy who’s just trying to come up with a solution that works for everyone. I explain to him the mess we’re in, tell him there’s nothing I can do, that he has to convince Toni to come down and mediate otherwise it’s going to turn into a bloodbath. I explain there are women inside the bar, and at least one corpse. Rotting. I tell him that if Toni comes down unarmed, El Jetita will personally vouch for his safety. I explain about firing three shots in the air and waving a white flag. I tell him I’m going to be there too and I’m prepared to put myself on the line. I lie like a politician. I need to go through with this farce about divvying up the turf just so they’ll stop shooting for a bit which will give me time to get the girls out the back and get the fuck out of here. After that, let them cap each other till there’s no one left standing. It’s the only way.
I sound completely reasonable. Just to make sure, I recap again, laying it on as thick as shit. I tell him Toni needs to get here asap. First thing in the morning latest because otherwise the people in the bar won’t make it.
‘Jesus, what a mess, dude,’ Piti says to me. ‘OK, I’ll tell him.’
Now all I need is for Toni to believe it. I can’t, even though the plan sounds completely reasonable. I can’t because I’m already dead. I’ve snuffed it same as Chueco. Right now I’m blowing bubbles at the bottom of the ocean, slowly rotting away, just like Ishmael would be if his story was true.
SWEET DREAMS
YANI IS SUCKING my cock. She’s naked, kneeling. Like she’s praying in front of an altar. Her mane of jet-black hair falls over her shoulders, curls shimmering blue in the sunlight. She arches her smooth back. I lean over and run my thumb down the ridged groove of her spine. I stop when I come to her arse. An inverted, fresh, mouth-watering summer pear, just waiting to be bitten. Beneath the blazing sun. She stops for a moment and smiles up at me. Her lips are moist. Oozing with the sweet nectar of the fruit. I’d like to taste them, but her face troubles me. It’s not Yani now, but some other woman, a woman who seems familiar. She grips my cock with both hands and goes on sucking. She’s good. She even plays with my balls. I’m just about to come when someone grabs my shoulder from behind and pulls me hard. Toni pushes me away. Suddenly I’m a kid again and he’s towering above me. He glares down at me, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth like a threat. He turns his back on me, starts fondling her tits, gives her arse a couple of slaps. I feel disgusted. When he’s finished pawing her, he puts a leash around her neck and drags her away. Like she’s some sort of animal. I’m left alone. I’m standing outside my school. The last teacher has gone home, they’re closing the front gate and I know mamá is not coming to pick me up. That she’ll never come and pick me up again. I fumble in the pocket of my school smock for change. I hav
en’t got a peso. What do I do now? I feel fear and sadness course through me and I start crying, bawling at the top of my lungs.
I wake up choking on my own tears, my nose dripping snot, my face soaked. They’re genuine tears. They broke out of my dream. The nightmare is not the one still echoing inside my head. The nightmare is waking up, because now I can’t even go on crying to console myself. Even though the terror is the same. Maybe worse.
Night has fallen around me. It’s cold. I’m still a little drunk. I fell asleep pressed against the bars of Zaid’s stall, my neck at a right angle, now I’ve got a cramp. My mouth is parched. I get up and ask Zaid for some water. At least he’s still here, like always. He gives me a bottle of mineral water. Cheap bastard always looking to make a sale. I only need something for my hangover. A glass of tap water would have done just as well. But I don’t say anything. I give him the money, and I don’t regret it. It’s sweet, delicious. The problem now is that my stomach hurts. Hardly surprising, it’s been at least twenty-four hours since I last had solid food. I ask Zaid if he’ll make me a hamburger and he can’t because he’s out of gas. He offers me a sandwich instead. It’s the last one. I stare at it under the filthy plastic cover that keeps the flies off. It turns my stomach but I say yes anyway. The bread’s stale, the tomato tastes slightly rotten, I don’t even taste the lettuce. I chuck it away because it’s all slimy and wilted. But the meat is fucking awesome.
I stretch my legs, go and piss against a tree, come back and ask the Turk the time. It’s nearly midnight. Santi should be showing up any minute now. In theory. Assuming Quique managed to track him down. Assuming he said he was up for driving me to Retiro, assuming he took the money. Assuming he didn’t bottle out at the last minute, assuming Charly’s people didn’t get to him.
It’s a lot of assuming, so I don’t hold out much hope. Anyway, even if he does come, then what? I’m just going to fuck off and disappear? I don’t even try to make the bastards pay for what they did to Chueco? I mean fuck sake, the guy was my compañero. And what if Santi shows without Quique? Am I going to do a runner and leave him stranded? And what about Yani? Didn’t I tell her to wait for me, that I’d go back and get her?
Seven Ways to Kill a Cat Page 14