Kilometer 99

by Tyler McMahon

  “The police?”

  “They chased us last night. It’s all a big misunderstanding.” In fact, it was more a case of too much understanding too fast.

  “What will you do about it?” she asks.

  I don’t quite know how to answer that question. But now, in the daylight, it seems plausible that I could head down to the station and talk this all out. “I guess I’ll go over there, see if somebody will listen to me.”

  Outside, a man pedals a creaking three-wheeled cart full of produce. He has a loudspeaker and microphone attached. In a robotic monotone, he mutters the prices of plantains, potatoes, onions, and mangoes. Kristy turns to him, then stares back at me and sighs. Frustrated, she walks off to buy vegetables.

  I shower, then do my best to dress up like somebody who could cause consequences for a local cop. From out of the mattress bundle, I take a hundred-dollar bill and tuck it into my bra.

  On the way out, I tell Kristy to be sure to watch our bedroom. She seems hurt by this remark, but I don’t much care.

  * * *

  The police station isn’t far. I’ve walked past it hundreds of times but never had any business there—not even when we’d captured burglars in our hotel room. The interior reminds me of the public schools I’ve seen in this country: the furniture too small for those who sit at it, the blue-and-white two-tone walls painted the colors of the Salvadoran flag, the stiff uniforms likely sewn by the mothers of those who wear them.

  An officer with a crew cut waits behind the counter. He holds a phone to his ear and listens to somebody on the other end, uttering the occasional “Yes” or “I understand.” He doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve entered.

  I put both hands on the counter. He looks up at me, then goes back to muttering and agreeing. Finally, he says good-bye and hangs up.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Did you bring a gringo in here last night? With red hair? A beard?” I use my hands to draw an air beard over my own face. “I need to see him.”

  The officer wrinkles his eyes as if deep in thought. In the ensuing minute, I nearly come undone. Only now do I allow myself to consider the much more terrible possibilities of where Ben might’ve wound up last night—that he might’ve been dealt with by the criminals, and not just the crooked cops.

  “It was two gringos, was it not?”

  I exhale so hard, it ripples the fabric of my shirt. “Yes.” I nod. “But I don’t give a shit about the other one.” If there were some way I could lay the whole blame on Pelo, a button I could press to force him to take the fall, believe me, I’d do it in an instant.

  The officer shakes his head. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “That’s too bad.” From out of my bra, I draw the hundred-dollar bill and lay it flat on the counter with both my hands. “You must get thirsty doing this job. I’d like to offer you a little something, for a soda.”

  He looks down at the bill, then back up at me. “Let’s go.” One meaty hand gestures for me to follow, the other grabs the hundred from off the counter. On his wrist is the expensive watch that Pelo wore yesterday.

  * * *

  He leads me out a back door. We cross a courtyard and enter another bare and boxy concrete room. This one holds a card table and two small plastic chairs.

  “Wait here,” he says.

  I nod.

  He starts to leave, then turns back to me. “The beard, right?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  He shuts the door and I wait. For a few minutes, I wonder if he’s taken off with my money. What could I do about it if he had?

  The iron latch jangles and the door swings open. I see Ben’s face, backlit by the morning sun. One of his ears is swollen and crusted in dried blood. His wrists are bound with tarnished cuffs. The same officer’s hand rests on his shoulder.

  I run over to hug him, but Ben says, “Don’t!”

  We stare at each other, our faces only inches apart. I take a confused step back.

  “It might be better if he doesn’t see too much … affection.” Ben gestures with his head toward the policeman.

  I nod. The two of us sit in the plastic chairs. The officer leans against the back wall.

  “Did they do that to you?” I can’t look away from his ear.

  “It happened last night,” Ben says. “It’s not so bad.”

  It looks bad to me. “What do we do now?”

  “Not sure.” Ben shrugs. “Doesn’t seem to be much actual law enforcement going on here. We haven’t been charged or anything legal like that.”

  “What happened to the last bale?” I look over at the officer leaning on the wall. He shows no signs of understanding English.

  Ben laughs. “The cops got all confused. They finally put it in the squad car and dropped it off at the real crack house.”

  I don’t find this funny.

  “We were there for a while, waiting in the car.”

  “So it’s true,” I say. “The cops are in the pocket of those guys?”

  Ben nods. “They’re definitely pulling the strings with us.”

  “Is that a bad thing or a good thing?”

  Ben squints and jukes his head back and forth. “Best case, they’ll decide we’ve learned our lesson and let us go. Worst case, they’ll think we’ve seen too much. I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it either way.”

  “I have to do something.” The words hiss their way out of my mouth.

  “Malia.” Ben cringes as though about to remove a splinter. “It might be better if you get out of this town. If these guys decide to do anything drastic, they won’t want any loose ends.”

  “What?” I’m taken aback. “There’s no way!” I want to tell him I’d never leave him here. Instead, I say, “I don’t even have a passport.”

  “Get to San Salvador, then. Someplace safer. Even Cara Sucia.” Ben turns toward the guard for a second, then back to me. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m worried about you!”

  He nods and stares down at the table. “All I wanted was a fucking surf trip.”

  The guard looks at his new wristwatch and says, “Ya.”

  “What should I do?” My eyes water.

  “Be careful,” Ben says. “Whatever else happens, this situation is not going to leave La Libertad. I’m sure of that.”

  The guard puts a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Vamos.”

  “I love you,” I say.

  “I love you, too, Malia.”

  I follow as far as the door while Ben is taken away.

  * * *

  For the next hour or so, I pace the courtyard of La Posada. By the looks she gives me from the kitchen, it’s obvious that Kristy expects me to find a solution to this mess. I have a seat in the dining room and ask her for a beer.

  She slams the bottle down on the table and gives me an angry glare.

  “Kristy?” I stop her before she walks back into the kitchen. “Did you lose anybody, in the earthquake?”

  “No one close to me, thanks to God,” she says. “My mother was on a bus from San Vicente. They were among the last ones to pass by before the tragedy there.”

  One of the more gruesome episodes brought on by the quake was a landslide on the Pan-American Highway. Several buses full of people were buried alive in dirt and mud. It’s a busy route, one that most Salvadorans must travel at one time or another. While not the deadliest aspect of the quake, it is perhaps the one that has most captured the imaginations of us, the survivors.

  “We were both lucky,” I say.

  “Yes. You heard about Don Adán’s family?”

  “No.” I realize that I’ve not seen the owner of La Posada in several weeks. “What about them?”

  “His in-laws lost their home, outside Santa Tecla. That’s been the biggest change for me. I’ve hardly seen the owners since.”

  “I didn’t realize,” I mumble.

  “They may try to sell this place. The señora never liked the business. I hope my job is s
table for a while longer.” She walks back into the kitchen.

  I carry my beer up to the roof and stare out at the rectangle of visible ocean. Not long ago, Ben and I were twenty-four hours away from leaving this place, from the trip of a lifetime. That kind of freedom—the very idea of it—feels unthinkable to me now.

  The sun creeps into the last quarter of the sky. I have to figure something out.

  * * *

  In the bedroom, I find my baggy jeans and hiking boots—the clothes I once wore to work on the aqueduct. I tie my hair back in a tight ponytail. Thankfully, that wad of bills still waits under the mattress. I pass them through my fingers a few times. It’s plenty. The ceiling fan sticks at the far end of its turn, lets out several clicks, and then goes the other way. I put a hundred dollars under the pillow. I break the rest of it up into four rubber-banded packets and put those into the four pockets of my jeans. I tuck one tightly folded Salvadoran bill into the palm of my hand.

  Outside, the sun has begun to set. I leave La Posada and head for the crack house. My only plan is to get Ben out of that jail, or die trying.

  * * *

  I don’t allow myself to hesitate crossing the street or at the stoop. My fist knocks against the red wood of the door. I let a long breath out through my nose.

  The door opens a few inches and a bearded face sticks out. “What do you want?” He blinks hard. “¿Mota?”

  “No,” I say. “I want to enter.”

  “Sorry.” He pushes the door toward me.

  “Here.” I hold up a fifty-colón bill. The rumor is that one must pay to go in, but I’ve never heard why or how much.

  He tenses his nostrils and takes the money from my hand. Then he pulls the door open and gestures for me to come inside.

  With one long stride, I cross the threshold into this, the last forbidden place in La Libertad. My eyes dilate in the dark. The doorman goes back to his post as soon as I’m inside—with no mention of any change from my bill.

  The only light comes from several small red bulbs burning at low angles along the walls. It reminds me of old pizza parlors. I see a few bony bodies seated on the floor, the spark of a lighter from the corner of my eye. This first room is connected to a narrow hallway. A gas stove sits upon a table in the corner by the door, a round tank of fuel at its side, blackened pots stacked atop its grill. The place smells of body odor and pool chemicals. Along the walls are posters and centerfolds of naked women. Gang signs and initials are scribbled onto the white rounds of their breasts and buttocks.

  As my vision improves, I make out the face of Peseta. He sits on an overturned milk crate against the wall, next to others. Our eyes meet. He wags his index finger back and forth, warning me not to speak to him.

  “What do you want, mi niña?” A tall man materializes from the hallway. He is shirtless, in American-style oversize jeans, his chest covered in gang tattoos: MS, 13, long-nailed demon hands making a series of signs. He wears a leather belt that has EL SALVADOR written in blocky stencils, alongside pictures of cowboy boots and cacti. He smiles and shows a golden front tooth. Along his forehead runs the phrase Pardon Me Mother, in a bluish cursive script. He looks me up and down, grins.

  “I need to speak to whoever’s in charge around here,” I say.

  He laughs hard, throws back his head. “What do you think this is? The customer service department?”

  “I have information,” I say, “about what happened last night.”

  That gets his attention. He nods for a long moment, then motions for me to follow him. Peseta and I exchange one last glance before I head down the hall. He shakes his head back and forth like a disappointed parent.

  Pardon Me Mother pounds on the last door at the end of the hallway. “Macizo,” he says to the wood. “Got something out here that might be of interest to you.”

  Pardon Me cracks open the door. He puts a hand on my shoulder and roughly ushers me in.

  Inside, it’s like a room from a totally different building. A ceiling fan rotates slowly above; its lamps keep the room well lit. A man in a white guayabera sits at a large desk. His pockmarked face has no tattoos. His hair is oily and black, well along into male-pattern baldness. He wears wire-frame glasses that look a few years out of style. A ledger notebook sits before him. The place reminds me of the doctor’s office where we took Pelo. In a chair beside the desk sits the same police officer who took me to see Ben this morning. He cocks his head at the sight of me. In one corner, there’s a large iron door that looks like it leads outside to the alley.

  “What in the devil is this little Chinese girl doing in my office?” asks the man at the desk.

  Pardon Me Mother clears his throat. “She says that she was there last night, Macizo, that she has information.”

  The cop leans over and speaks into the boss’s ear.

  The boss removes his glasses and rubs at the space between his eyes. “All right,” he says. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”

  “Yes, sir.” I swallow. “This is all a big misunderstanding. You see, we believed we were doing this errand for you, for your … organization. That big-haired gringo, the one with the eye patch, he’s an idiot. He made arrangements with those other…” I struggle to come up with a word that they won’t find offensive. “Other salesmen. Ben—the bearded one—and I, we didn’t know. We thought it was a service to you. Instantly, we saw the error.”

  The boss stares on at me, impatient and unmoved. “You were there last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “To whom did you deliver those goods?” he asks.

  I pause. “It was a blue house, a few blocks from here. There were two men. I didn’t recognize them.”

  “And the original delivery?”

  “By sea.” I suddenly feel useful, like I have something to offer. “There were two of them as well, their faces covered with handkerchiefs. At the cove we call Kilometer Ninety-nine.”

  The boss turns to the policeman, who offers him a nod. They seem to know all this already.

  The boss turns back to me. “Is that all?”

  I decide to lay all of my cards on the table. “I have the money. I assume you have the product or know how you can get it. I need the bearded one back. That’s all I ask.”

  The boss crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Where are you from?” he asks me in perfect English.

  “The States.” I switch to English as well. “Hawai‘i, actually.”

  “Do you know much about the Conflict?”

  “The Conflict?”

  “Yes. The civil war that took place in this country not so long ago.”

  It’s the last question I expect him to ask. “A little,” I say. “I’ve lived in El Salvador for nearly two years, most of the time in a small village north of here. Some of the families there fought with the Frente, most with the army.” I shrug. “It’s hard not to hear things, under those circumstances.

  “Have you heard of El Mozote?” His English is excellent.

  I nod. “I visited. Almost two years ago.”

  “You’ve been there?” He raises his eyebrows. “Seen the little memorial with the silhouettes?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s very moving.”

  The policeman’s chair creaks as he leans back and crosses his legs. As I thought this morning, he doesn’t appear to understand English.

  “I was there, you know,” the boss man continues, “on that day twenty years ago. I come from a village nearby. I lost my family then. You understand what happened, yes?”

  “Rape,” I say. “Murder. Women and children all killed for no good reason. Some pretense about finding the guerilla.”

  “Little girls.” He holds up the palm of his hand to indicate a short stature. “Ten or twelve years old. Can you imagine? They cut off heads until their arms were tired and their machetes were dull. Then they used the machine guns.”

  Tears well up behind my eyes. The room goes silent but for the slow rotation of the fan above, like the blades on
an old helicopter.

  “The journalists always mention that those soldiers were the ones trained by the gringos.”

  I manage to whisper, “I’m not really a gringo.”

  “But I tend to think it’s impossible to train anyone to commit that kind of brutality.”

  I nod.

  “These young men today”—he points with his lips at Pardon Me Mother—“they will never suffer the way that my generation suffered.” He shakes his head. “And still they walk around as if they have some chip on their shoulder.”

  I turn toward Pardon Me Mother. He doesn’t understand a word. I wonder if the two of them are related.

  “Let me ask you something,” the boss says. “What do you believe you were doing there last night?”

  “Last night?” With the El Mozote story, I’ve nearly forgotten my reason for coming here. “I thought we would make some fast money. Cash was stolen from us recently. This … this errand—it seemed a good way to settle things. That’s all.”

  The boss man nods. “Some fast money. A way to even accounts.” He turns to the cop momentarily, then back to me. “It’s interesting. I hid in a tree and watched twenty years ago as those so-called soldiers committed all those horrible acts—killing children as if they were breaking open anthills. I asked myself, How can one do such things? Now I understand that they couldn’t see it for what it was. If I had asked one of those young men, all he would have said was, ‘I was pulling a trigger, following orders.’ And the superiors—who are even more irredeemable—they’d have simply said they were winning a war, saving their country from godless communism. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “I think so,” I say. “It all depends on the frame of reference. If your focus is too narrow or too wide, you can obscure the act itself. Not see it for what it is.”

  From the main room down the hall, a ranchero song suddenly blares. Pardon Me Mother turns his head toward the sound, unsure if he should go and silence it.

  “So when you say that you were only interested in some fast money, a small measure of economic justice, I have to ask myself, Does she not understand the kinds of consequences associated with this thing that she did last night? Or is she just stupid?”