by Tom Epperson
“Hey, don’t worry, she’s not my type,” Chino says. He’s doubtless called Chino—Chinaman—because of his slightly slanted eyes. “I like tall girls with big tits.”
“You like anything with a pussy in it,” the sergeant says.
“Everybody else is going to be having a big party,” Chávez whines, “and we’ll be stuck out here.”
“At least bring us something decent to eat,” says Chino. “I’m tired of eating slop.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” says the sergeant, heading toward the door.
“Hey, sergeant,” says the guy with the snake tattoo, “what are we supposed to do with them?” Indicating Roberto and Lina. “Put them in a closet or something?”
“I don’t give a shit where you put them. As long as they’re still here in the morning.”
As the sergeant opens the front door, Roberto hears the peacock shrieking in the distance. The sergeant closes the door behind him. Everybody’s looking at Lina and Roberto.
“Please don’t put us in a closet,” says Roberto. “We won’t give you any trouble. We promise.”
The guy with the snake tattoo grabs Roberto’s arm and pulls him over to a chair and pushes him down. “Sit your ass down here and don’t move.” Now he takes Lina’s arm and, treating her more gently, brings her to a couch and has her sit down at one end.
“You comfortable, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” says Lina. “Thank you.”
“Hey, boys,” says Chino, reaching in his pack, “fuck everybody else. We’re going to have our own party.”
He holds up a bottle of premium scotch. Glasses are procured from the kitchen, and all five Black Jaguars begin to drink. None of them are paying any attention to Roberto and Lina. He looks at her across the darkening room. She manages a smile, and he smiles back. He’d like to tell her how wonderful she was back at the lake. So cool under pressure, so fast with her answers. He wonders what she’s thinking. He wonders if they both will live to see the morning.
The lights come on. The Black Jaguars clap. The first thing they do is turn on the TV, and then they start arguing about what to watch. They finally settle on a telenovela about a handsome young vallenato singer from the coast who comes to the capital city to seek his fame and fortune. He achieves great success but handles it badly, all the money and women and false friends and drugs send him down a path that may lead to his destruction. His sweet, pretty girlfriend from back home arrives in the big city to try to save him.
* * *
They go through the scotch pretty fast, and then a bottle of aguardiente appears. Roberto attaches names to all five of them: besides Chino and Chávez, there’s Oscar, the fat one, Alfonso, the one with the snake tattoo, and Joaco, a short silent guy with dark Indian features. Roberto’s pleased they’re drinking so much, pleased they seem to have forgotten that he and Lina are even here, pleased they’re out in the guesthouse away from the main group of paramilitaries. He thinks the odds of rescue are improving by the minute.
It’s clear now Luna was toying with them at the lake. He had no intention of letting Roberto or Lina go before he’d checked their stories out. It’s lucky there’s no Internet out here and nobody can google “antonio alvarado south american center for human rights.” It’s also lucky that the law professor/colonel turned out to be such an inept interrogator; because he didn’t question Roberto and Lina separately, they could create a story together. So they’ve been able to buy some time, at least until the “commander” (Hernán 40?) arrives.
A large green moth bumps against a light shade, throws its fluttering shadow against the wall. Roberto sees Lina watching it, and now she looks at him. It’s like a silent communication: you and I are watching the moth together. What wouldn’t Roberto give if he could go back to yesterday when he and Lina and Daniel were in Diego’s guesthouse debating whether to continue to El Encanto or go back to Tarapacá? If he’d just listened to them, they’d all probably be in Tarapacá right now, maybe partying at Yadier’s house. He thinks of the six dead monkeys and what Roque said; it’s Roberto’s fault if any of the six of them die.
Emergency Room is on the TV now. It’s based on an American show and is about a handsome young doctor who saves a dozen patients a night and makes all the nurses fall in love with him. Roberto wonders where Daniel is at this moment. He imagines the jungle surrounding Daniel, the strange sounds and the mosquitoes and the shadows and the fear. He’s probably cursing Roberto incessantly in his mind at the same time he’s getting ready to risk his life for him.
Alfonso’s talking about a rich businessman he used to work for as a bodyguard. “He took his girlfriend to Miami and bought her some fucking purse made out of African crocodile skin. Do you know how much it cost? Fifty-one thousand American dollars!”
Chino gives a contemptuous snort. “I used to wipe my ass on fifty-one thousand dollars.”
Oscar takes a puff of his cigarette and looks at Chino skeptically. “Have you ever told the truth about anything, Chino?”
“Not very often. But I’m telling the truth now.”
“So how’d you get so rich?”
“Moving drugs, of course. But I was forced out by the three letters.” That’s drug slang for the American Drug Enforcement Agency. “They had me by the balls. They said they were going to arrest me and extradite me to America if I didn’t become an informer. Do you know what they do to informers if they’re caught? You don’t want to know, it would make you throw up. So I took off, I left my wife and kids behind, I changed my name. It was the best thing I ever did. The drug business is too dangerous, everybody’s always killing everybody. Money’s no good to a dead man. And the wife and kids were a pain in the ass, I’m glad to be rid of them.”
Alfonso laughs. “And you spent all your fucking money, huh? What an idiot.”
“Who says I spent all my money? My brother and me are buying a ranch in Spain, you think that comes cheap? Some of the best fighting bulls in the country are raised on that ranch.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Spain,” says Oscar, and then he looks at Lina. “Have you ever been to Spain, Carmen?”
“Yes. Once.”
“How did you like it?”
Lina shrugs. “I was only five or six years old, I hardly even remember it.”
“But you must remember something.”
Lina thinks a moment. “I remember being on the beach with my parents. Playing in the sand. And chasing a seagull.”
Roberto was in Spain last year with Caroline. They were driving from Madrid to Galicia, and decided to stop off in Segovia. It’s a romantic oasis of a city, with an old Moorish castle called the Alcázar rising before you as you approach. Roberto and Caroline toured the Alcázar, then had great seafood and wine at a dimly lit restaurant in the shadow of the castle. As evening fell, so did snow, with the snowflakes gently turning the dusk into a dream.
Chávez is sitting on the other end of the couch from Lina. Now he replenishes his glass with aguardiente and stands up and heads her way.
“You look like you could use a drink.”
“No thanks,” says Lina.
He sits down beside her. “It’ll make you feel better, I promise.”
He tries to put the glass to her lips but she turns her head away.
“No! I don’t want any!”
Chávez laughs and grabs her hair. “Yes, you do, you bitch! Open wide!”
Chávez tries to keep her head still as he forces the glass between her lips. Aguardiente dribbles down her chin.
“Stop it!” says Roberto. “She doesn’t want it!”
“Oh, she wants it all right—”
Joaco, the quiet Indian guy, comes up behind Chávez, locks a forearm across his throat, drags him away from Lina, and drops him on the floor. Chávez coughs and rubs his throat and looks up at Joaco in astonishment.
“What the fuck you do that for?”
“The sergeant said to leave her alone.”
Chávez gets to his feet.
>
“Well, I don’t see the sergeant anywhere, do you?” and now he starts jabbing his forefinger at Joaco. “And if you ever touch me again, I’ll fucking kill you!”
Joaco pulls his knife out of its sheath.
“Kill me now.”
The other three Black Jaguars are watching with big grins—this is more entertaining than Emergency Room.
Chávez glances at the knife, obviously losing his nerve.
“Not today, you Indian piece of shit. But it’s coming, just you wait!”
Joaco smirks and resheathes his knife. Chávez sees Roberto looking at him.
“And I’ll kill you too, you motherfucker! Don’t you ever tell me what to do!”
Oscar laughs. “You’re going to kill everyone, Chávez. There won’t be anyone left in the world but you.”
Roberto looks at Lina. Her shirt’s splotched with the spilled liquor. They’re totally at the mercy of these drunken killers. Roberto looks at the front door. He imagines it bursting open, Quique and Ernesto coming through, spraying the room with their Galils, taking out the lot of them.
* * *
It seems appropriate that the opening credits of a reality show about cooking have just begun when some food arrives: spaghetti with tomato sauce and slices of fresh fruit, brought by the sergeant and two other men. Roberto and Lina’s plastic cuffs are removed and they’re both given plates of food and glasses of water. Roberto balances the plate on his knees and forces himself to eat. His broken finger hurts bad and looks like a fat purplish sausage stuck on his hand. He twines some spaghetti strands around his fork, reflecting that if this were an action movie and he its hero, he could lunge at the nearest Black Jaguar and stab the fork into his throat and grab his weapon and kill everybody and then he and Lina could escape into the night.
The sergeant says he wants a man standing guard outside the guesthouse and orders Chávez to take the first shift, and then he and the two others leave. Chávez gets some more spaghetti and takes his plate outside, all the while bitching bitterly. Roberto and Lina finish their food. Their plates and forks are taken away and then they’re allowed to go to the bathroom, Lina first. Oscar escorts her. As she moves past Roberto, her eyes meet his, and though it lasts only a moment there’s something about the look that makes him feel as if an electric shock is going through him. She’s telling him: Be ready.
He watches Lina and Oscar disappearing down a hallway, his rifle pointing in a general way at her. With his soft face and big stomach and ambling way of walking, he could not look less like a soldier. Roberto thinks: She’s going to try to get his gun. This is her chance with the handcuffs off. It’s the kind of thing she’s been trained to do. Roberto never asked her if she’d ever killed anyone, but one has to assume the answer’s yes. She’s Chano’s niece, after all.
Roberto’s heart starts pounding. Be ready, okay. But be ready to do what? He looks around, locates everyone. Joaco is walking into the kitchen, taking his Kalashnikov with him. Chino is sitting on the couch, Alfonso in a nearby armchair. They’re drinking and loudly talking to each other; their weapons are leaning against the furniture they’re sitting on. Chávez is outside. What does Roberto do when the shooting starts, when the hallway thunders with gunfire and flashes with light? He can’t just sit here like some spectator at a sporting event and watch Lina take on five armed men by herself. He hasn’t even been in a fistfight since he was a kid but he has to do something, hurl himself at someone, divert their attention long enough to allow Lina to shoot them.
Roberto tries to stay calm. He sits and waits. Each second seems to extend longer than he can stand it.
Joaco comes out of the kitchen. He clasps Roberto’s forearm, lifts it up, and takes a look at his watch. It’s an inexpensive Swatch he’s had since college. Now Joaco pulls it off Roberto’s wrist and puts it on his own wrist and walks away.
Alfonso’s talking to Chino about his girlfriend. “She took off her fucking shoes and threw them at me, then she ran across the street, and she was nearly hit by a bus!” and he laughs. “She’s Brazilian-Italian, so beautiful and yet so crazy, it’s in her blood.”
On the cooking show, a crestfallen contestant who’s just made a disastrous Beef Stroganov has his apron taken away by the judges.
And then Lina appears, followed by Oscar. She glances at Roberto and gives the slightest of shrugs. Oscar zip-ties her hands again and sits her back down on the couch, then looks at Roberto.
“Your turn.”
Roberto walks down the hallway with Oscar behind him. Oscar’s maintaining a careful distance from Roberto. He must not have given Lina a good opportunity to disarm him. Well, he doesn’t have anything to worry about with Roberto.
Roberto goes in the bathroom and takes his stance in front of the toilet. As he unzips and pees, Oscar leans in the doorway, smoking a cigarette and humming to himself. He’s not paying Roberto any particular attention, as though attempting to provide him with a bit of privacy.
“You’re not like the others,” says Roberto.
Oscar looks at him and smiles. “You’re right. I’m not.”
“What’s your story?”
“Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? I seem to have no story. My father’s a man of considerable influence—maybe that’s my story. He thought serving a stretch in the Black Jaguars would be good for me, make me a man and so forth. That remains to be seen.”
Roberto shakes out the last drops, then zips up and flushes. He turns to Oscar.
“What will happen tomorrow?”
Oscar looks at him with a certain amount of sympathy.
“I don’t know. Honestly.”
Roberto nods. “Can I wash my hands?”
“Sure.”
Roberto goes to the sink and turns on the water. He washes his hands then takes off his glasses and splashes water on his face. He takes a towel and dries his face and hands and then cleans his glasses, which are filthy. Now he puts them back on, and regards himself in the mirror.
He seems to be looking not at a mirror but through a window at somebody else. For a moment it feels ineffably strange to be him, he has no idea what he is or what life is. Is he a man called Roberto, or just some phantom the mind of the jungle has dreamed up?
* * *
Oscar’s snoring. He’s sprawled across one end of the couch, his boots off, his black beret askew. Joaco, Chino, and Alfonso are drinking and watching the replay of a soccer game. Lina’s eyes are closed, but Roberto doesn’t get the sense that she’s asleep. Maybe she’s meditating, or she’s trying to figure a way out of this fix, or she’s lost herself in the beauty and bliss of some time in her past. Roberto knows so little about her really, he has no idea how her mind works.
A few minutes ago, he heard bursts of automatic weapon fire and people shouting and he expected Lina’s comrades to come through the door, but it turned out it was just a couple of drunken Black Jaguars who claimed they had spotted an actual jaguar slinking through the trees. They’re probably waiting to make their move till everyone falls into a stuporous sleep, though there’s another possibility. Presumably they have Lina’s satellite phone, so maybe they’ve made contact with other members of the TARV who are in the area and are even now hurrying their way. This time it could be the Black Jaguars that get massacred at El Encanto, at Las Matanzas.
Roberto hears voices outside the front door and it opens and Chávez comes in with two other guys. One looks no older than seventeen or eighteen and has such a cute, sweet face he looks more like a Happy Boy than a paramilitary. The other is Vladimiro, the tall ugly guy who was doing his best to charm Lina at the lake. They’re welcomed warmly since they’ve brought a nearly full bottle of El Dorado rum. Chávez announces his shift outside is over, and Alfonso, who seems to be in charge as much as anybody, sends Joaco out to stand guard.
The bottle’s passed around. Chino fills his glass to the brim.
“Hey, you pig,” says Chávez, grabbing the bottle away, “leave some for the rest of
us.”
Roberto looks at Lina. Her eyes are open now, and she’s warily watching Vladimiro.
The young guy is extremely drunk. He stands swaying a little, staring at the TV with glazed eyes and a silly grin.
“Who’s winning?” he says.
“Nobody,” says Alfonso.
“How can nobody be winning?”
“Because it’s tied, you idiot. See? It’s right up there on the screen.”
“So how are our prisoners?” says Vladimiro. “Have they been behaving themselves?”
“Not her,” says Chávez, jerking his chin toward Lina. “She’s been a bitch.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. She thinks she’s too good to drink with us.”
“Is that right, beautiful? Are you too good to drink with us?”
“I don’t drink,” says Lina.
“Too bad,” says Vladimiro. “You’re missing out on a lot of fun.”
He wanders over to Roberto.
“What about you,” he says, “do you drink?”
“Yes.”
“Go ahead.”
He puts the glass to Roberto’s lips, and the sweet rum runs down his throat.
“More?”
Roberto nods, and Vladimiro tilts the glass again, as if he’s a sympathetic nurse and Roberto’s his feeble bedridden patient. Roberto’s hoping the rum numbs the agony of this night just a little.
“How’s your finger?” says Vladimiro.
“It hurts.”
“You’ll be hurting a lot more tomorrow,” says Chino, “when Hernán 40 gets finished with you,” and he laughs. Roberto and Lina look at each other.
One of Vladimiro’s big hands reaches toward Roberto’s throat. He thinks for a moment Vladimiro’s about to strangle him, but then he slips a finger under the thin silver chain around Roberto’s neck and lifts out of his shirt the medal Diana Langenberg gave him.
“What’s this?” says Vladimiro.
“It’s a St. Jude Thaddeus medal.”
“Who’s he?”
“The patron saint of desperate cases. It’s supposed to protect you from danger.”
Vladimiro gazes at the golden bearded image of St. Jude, then he gives the medal a sharp pull and pops the chain. He pockets the medal, then goes over to the couch and sits down between Oscar and Lina. Oscar’s still asleep, and he gives his shoulder a shove.