And one day around Callejón del Gámbaro, I ran into him when I was coming out of work. He looked stooped, older. He asked for a peso, making it sound like a joke, and I invited him to get a beer. We went into one of those bars on San Sebastián and settled in at the counter, which was covered with candles and ashtrays. He drank calmly, serenely, detached from what was going on behind him at the restaurant tables. He held the bottle with a napkin, and when he brought it to his mouth, foam sliding out the corners, his expression was transfigured. I had the impression that the alcohol ran swiftly through his veins, one by one healing all his wounds. We talked for hours without stopping, laughing loudly. It was very late when we drunkenly said goodbye and I gave him twenty dollars. I heard he got by as a handyman, fixing plumbing and household appliances, but it’s possible that he was already involved in other business. Maintaining a vice costs you a nut. Sometimes both.
* * *
He disappeared completely around Christmas. The radio played “La Finquita,” the hit by Tavín Pumarejo, and also a song by Tony Croato that depressed me: the story of a kid with torn shorts, barefoot and freezing. Repollo didn’t leave a trace. Someone told me it was rumored that he’d screwed someone over and taken off. I believed it, so he was either dead or on the run—six feet under, wrapped in a Glad bag, or in an apartment on the Lower East Side, sleeping on a cot, dressed like a janitor. One night, in the middle of a City Council meeting, my doubts were eliminated. Doña Cambucha, the spinster of San Justo, accused him of robbing the rearview mirrors from cars. Can, the girl from Tetuán, seconded the complaint, adjusting her cleavage: “He took the hubcaps off my Nissan, the crook.”
I knew right away that his hours were numbered. I searched high and low to find him.
“You’re heating up,” I warned him.
He smiled, showing his teeth, indifferent, and took a wooden top out of his pocket. He wound the string around the tip, tightening it with his thumb, and threw it onto the ground. That slow dance across the stones entranced us; we were captured by its spinning, tied to its movement; the lost murmur of our innocence, the sounds of the waves crashing against the rocks on the coast, our broken dreams. Immobilized on the benches of the dock, sheltered by a tree, we scrutinized the horizon, the wind shaking the bushes. Hiding my anxiety, I tried to find cracks in his face, signals that would help me guess what was convulsing inside him. I found no answer, just a sad question in his gaze.
“Keep it,” he chided, “see if you can learn how to use it.”
He headed for Covadonga, prowled around the area, and his pilgrimage ended around the bus station, slouched on a sidewalk, watching the flow of passersby.
* * *
Word got around among the neighborhood residents that he’d already been given a warning: “Pickpockets have to go to Condado.” It was the logical move. Robberies attract the police, inconvenience the residents, create a climate of suspicion and rancor, and, in the end, damage the drug trade. The important thing is to guarantee the normal flow of goods and services. The recipe is simple: if something alters the social harmony, it’s eliminated. So a good capo, apart from being invisible and feared by his peers, insures that there’s order. He intimidates thieves, gives the belt to abusers, compensates widows, takes care of appearances, and administers justice. In a sentence: he imposes his law, with an Uzi SMG hanging from his shoulder. There’s no other way for the gang to gain ground. I once heard a taxi driver near Tapia say that we need fewer governors and more gangsters.
* * *
Life continued on its way. I forgot about the thing with Repollo. My work routine imposed itself against my will. Getting up at six to avoid traffic. Tying my tie, driving to the office. Punching in before eight, taking a break at ten. Eating lunch, filling out forms, attending meetings. Drinking coffee, smoking, snacking on donuts. Monday to Friday: the automation reflected on the computer screen. I was waiting for the bell, and my existence turned into a silent movie.
One day, near the end of my Semana Santa vacation, I was heading up to Hooters when I noticed a crowd gathering around one of the watchtowers, including some police officers and reporters. A soft breeze blew, dragging in an intense, salty odor. I went over to see what was going on, removing my hat, and from a distance I made out the sailboat retrieving a solitary swollen arm, floating out to sea, chewed on by fish.
“It must be from a Dominican,” someone speculated.
I moved away silently, heartbeats pounding in my chest, sweat running down my thighs. My soul made a junkyard of words, convinced they were wrong. The robberies in the area had stopped, and I hadn’t seen him standing on the corner of Ballajá lately, absently peering out of the graveyard. I went out and looked for him everywhere, I must confess, aware of his fate and of the futility of my effort, the top he’d given me clenched in my fist, dancing inside me, inaudible. It’s hard to know what his last minutes were like. He was impulsive and antisocial. Brave with little effort. I just hope that they killed him before cutting off his limbs, to spare him the pain. But hired thugs tend to be sadistic, and they have their methods. There’s no way to know.
THE INFAMY OF CHIN FERNÁNDEZ
by Tere Dávila
Barrio Obrero
“Invisibility!” he commands, like a superhero from an action comic. But he humbly prays for it from the Almighty too. Chin Fernández asks for the protection necessary to enter the neighbor’s patio, cross behind the plantain trees, slip between the trash bins, and make it to the clothesline, where the sheets that were left out all night will provide him the necessary cover on that patio—which is foreign to him, but identical to his own and to all the others in the neighborhood: a narrow U bordering a squat, sweltering house. That familiarity helps him feel less like a scoundrel than he should, crouching behind the three-foot cement wall that separates one residence from the other. There, Chin waits, ready to jump.
The neighborhood is still asleep—Maritza too, Chin is used to getting up and dressing without waking her—as the sky turns from black to violet, and the shapes of things start to emerge. Not a soul in the street, or nearly, because suddenly there’s another presence on the pavement. Chin almost jumps from fright, but it turns out to be Prieto, who won’t give him away. Better than that, it’s good that he’s out and about and was able to escape again from Angelito; hopefully he’ll get away for good, disappear; but when the dog, recognizing him, comes over, weakly wagging his tail, Chin notices that he’s been beaten and maimed, in such pain that he won’t be going anywhere. What kind of person abuses their own animal like that? he wonders, remembering the afternoon he found him bleeding in an alley.
“Don’t bring that dog in the house!” Maritza had scolded him when she saw them approaching.
“But look what that thug did to him . . .”
Maritza shook her head, making it clear that, as usual, Chin didn’t understand anything. “Aha, and what will you do when Angelito finds out where his dog is? I don’t want that madman showing up here.”
She had a point. The next day, Angelito had shown up looking for him.
“Give him back,” he said to Chin, one foot inside the house, poisoning everything with his bad blood and demonic appearance: face like a skinhead, skinny as a cable, veins protruding from his neck; like one of those guys who smile just before stabbing you.
“Why don’t you leave him with me?” Chin had responded, but the request lacked conviction, like when you ask for a privilege that you know beforehand won’t be granted.
“If I see you with my dog again, I’ll kill you,” Angelito had threatened before taking Prieto away on a chain leash.
Most men named “Angelito” come out just the opposite, Chin thinks, and then fantasizes, with more than a little pleasure, that the guy falls down dead, that someone burns him with the same cigarettes he uses to torture Prieto, that he gets a beating instead off doling them out . . . but no—better to remove bad thoughts from his head. According to the reverend, we sin not just in action but al
so in thought and, considering where he is now, it would be better to keep his thoughts pure, so God won’t abandon him.
Invisibility, he repeats to himself. It’s a matter of jumping over, running to the far side of the patio without being caught, grabbing what he wants—he saw it yesterday when the neighbor came out to hang up the clothes—and returning quickly to the street. He feels his heart beating so fast that it’s difficult to breath.
I can’t handle this kind of stress anymore; lots of forty-year-old men kick the bucket for less.
* * *
On the bus heading to work, he keeps his hand in the pocket of his handyman jumpsuit. He punches in. Pours coffee. Cleans the bronze banisters in the lobby where his coworkers hurry by. He eats lunch alone in the cafeteria. And all day long, his hand going in and out of his pocket, stroking his treasure every five minutes: he plans how he’ll care for them, how he’ll give the stolen panties the value and importance they deserve.
“Can you change Gómez’s lightbulb?” says the receptionist, pulling him out of his daydream. And there goes Chin with his screwdriver. Gómez doesn’t even greet him or stand up from his desk; he just moves his ergonomic chair to one side so Chin can do his thing without getting in the way.
Where would she look for them? Chin imagines his neighbor looking through drawers, closets, and inside the washing machine, searching for the panties. But she won’t find them. Chin smiles and gives his pocket a little pat, thinking about the other women, the previous women, looking for their missing garments; some that must have been their favorites, others that they almost never used, but were reserved for special occasions and for that reason, perhaps, they miss them even more. Because that’s the point: they belonged to someone. It’s no good to go to a department store and buy a dozen pairs with no history. That someone misses them is precisely what gives them value.
* * *
He punches out at six and is on his way, running late, to the church, where everyone is already sitting—Maritza, in the tenth row, hasn’t saved him a seat—so he listens to the sermon, which is quite long, standing in the back. When the service is over, he heads to the dais, where the reverend is talking to a few congregants. Normally he avoids greeting him, his wife does that, but considering that morning’s activities, he feels the need to earn some points with God.
He waits his turn, looking for a pause in the conversation to greet the reverend, but no one gives him a chance; someone jumps in front of him, or someone else cuts in with another question. So there he is, in front of everyone, his nose buried in chitchat, nobody noticing him, like they don’t even see him. He wonders if he really has become invisible; so he gives up and goes back Maritza.
“And that outfit?” she asks, definitely seeing him, or really just his jumpsuit.
She’s right, he should’ve changed. Chin starts to explain: he got held up in the office, he didn’t want to be even later—but Maritza doesn’t listen, she’s busy doling out kisses.
* * *
He heads home alone. There’s no moon, and Barrio Obrero looks gray and monotone without the color of the day, when the sun strikes the blue, green, pink, and yellow walls of structures that, though identical in construction, show their individuality in layers of paint. Peach, guava, and turquoise—shades more appropriate for lingerie than for concrete.
Chin rubs the stolen panties as if they are a good luck charm. A pair of tennis shoes hangs from a power line.
Angelito. Those shoes must indicate a drug corner that he controls. Or maybe they killed someone there, because when someone gets taken out they say that the dude hung up his shoes. Either way it’s unclear; Chin doesn’t know if they indicate territory or are giving a more serious warning, and anyway, he doesn’t know how long they’ve been there nor who they belonged to. He keeps stroking the little piece of satin; he’s almost halfway home when he hears the whimpers.
Prieto.
He goes down an alley to his right, slips behind an abandoned shed, and peers—for the second time in less than twenty-four hours—into someone else’s patio, though he’d never wanted to come to this one, nor had he ever been invited.
Chin sees the silhouettes of Angelito and Prieto against the back wall. The dog curls in on himself, trying to make himself small and disappear, but the boot hits home anyway. Another whimper. Angelito takes a drag from his cigarette—the orange tip glows in the darkness—then exhales, grips the chain that holds Prieto, and extinguishes the coal on his head.
Chin shouts.
“Who’s there?” Angelito grunts.
Chin covers his mouth, as if that could cancel the sound. His feet have ignored the order from his brain to take off running; if he goes now, that madman will kill Prieto for sure. Instead, he holds his breath and prays, crouching down being the wall, barely three feet high.
“Come out, cabrón!” Angelito shouts, advancing.
Click.
A knife flicks open in Angelito’s right hand. Chin instinctively brings his hands to his pockets, searching for a weapon he knows doesn’t exist.
Something, something . . . His right fist closes around an unexpected object: not the piece of satin he’s been caressing all day, but something else—the screwdriver that he used to install Gómez’s lightbulb.
* * *
Barrio Obrero seems bigger than it is. The connected buildings, the many little houses, the daytime activity, all the businesses and small shops bewilder those who don’t know the area, but you can walk its perimeter fairly quickly. From Angelito’s patio to Chin’s house is no more than ten minutes, although right now Chin feels that each step takes forever; he’ll never be able to get away from that damned patio. The scene repeats in his mind and he sees again how Angelito falls to the ground, with that skinhead smile turning bit by bit into an incredulous expression—so certain was he that Chin was harmless—with the screwdriver protruding from his neck. The move took him by surprise, he fell to the side and bled out from his throat. Before taking off, Chin let Prieto off his chain. The dog approached the man who until that moment had been his master, and, to check that he was dead, began to lick the bloodied ground.
* * *
The street is calm. Nobody has come out, no light has been turned on to signal an alarm, the evening is just like any other. Chin Fernández has gone unnoticed as always. And what isn’t seen here doesn’t exist, he tells himself, turning the corner onto his street.
“Here he comes!” someone announces.
There’s a mess of people in front of his house, and worse—two officers, one short and older, the other tall and young, waiting beside a patrol car that looks like a mobile dance club with all its spinning lights.
“Are you Adalberto Jesús Fernández?” asks the older officer.
Chin nods and the younger officer produces a piece of paper that he puts in front of his nose, apparently granting them permission to come inside.
How did they find out so fast?
He doesn’t understand. He just left Angelito’s patio, nobody saw him, and besides, the police are never that efficient.
He goes upstairs with the two officers, takes out his key to the front door, and looks at his hands. They’re clean—he’d found a spigot in the alley—and his old jumpsuit doesn’t have any stains that stand out among the others, from oil and paint.
“You take the living room and I’ll start in the kitchen,” one officer says to the other. Within minutes they go through the kitchen cabinets and the sofa and chair cushions; they take the Sacred Heart down from the wall, and even pull out the TV. They move quickly. They open the doors of the oven and refrigerator, where, of course, they don’t find anything of interest, but they leave everything wide open anyway.
Chin, prisoner of panic, covertly feels inside his pockets. God hasn’t forgotten me, he sighs with relief; only the panties there, he doesn’t have the screwdriver on him. He reviews his actions: he definitely removed it from Angelito’s neck and threw it away. The police weren’t going to find
anything.
But meanwhile, they are emptying the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.
“What’s all this?” shrieks Maritza, who has just come home from the service. She goes from one officer to the other, ignoring Chin, who wouldn’t have known what to tell her anyway. The older officer plants himself in front of her and silences her with a, “Señora, be quiet if you don’t want us to arrest you,” and that gives her the hiccups.
They move to the bedroom, where they remove all the clothes from the closets and unmake the bed, throwing everything on the floor. Chin, who has remained fixed like a post while the police do their thing, suddenly moves—reflexively, without thinking—to pick up one thing: his pillow. The young police officer sees him and, without giving him a chance to react, rips it away from him. Like a broken piñata, the pillow spits out white, blue, red, pink, black, and violet lace; small pieces of satin and silk, some with bows and little flowers, others with tiger stripes or leopard print.
The police officer bends down and collects the panties, one pair at a time, and starts handing them to his partner. Maritza hiccups and sobs quietly without interrupting the counting process: seven, eight, nine . . . and Chin understands at last. Of course someone saw him, but not tonight and not in Angelito’s patio. More than anything he’s surprised that they view him as someone dangerous.
Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty. That’s why the police are there, for the eighty pairs of stolen panties hidden inside the pillow that he, Chin Fernández, has zealously sewn and unsewn for months. The pillow where he rests his head every night.
“Excuse me,” he interrupts, “you’re missing one.”
He takes the panties out of his pocket and, allowing himself the perverse pleasure of breaking the round sum of eighty, he hands them over, so they can be taken into evidence.
The short officer handcuffs him and escorts him, almost courteously, as if he hadn’t just destroyed the interior of his house, toward the patrol car, around which more onlookers have gathered. There are the neighbors—including the owner of the patio that Chin infiltrated that morning—the guy who runs the shop two streets down, the reverend, accompanied by some of the church’s congregants, and many people who Chin doesn’t know who must have come running, attracted by Maritza’s screams or by the presence of the patrol car. On the other side of the street, he sees the silhouette of a dog. Prieto? And also an individual with a skinhead’s smile who looks a lot like Angelito but who, of course, isn’t, because he’s wearing the official shirt of Channel 4 News.
San Juan Noir Page 3