by J. M. Porup
Pitt grabbed the bottom of my sweater and T-shirt, yanked them up to my nipples. My scars cringed in the open air. My ribs bulged like some starved Ethiopian orphan. Maybe I could get UNESCO to send me emergency rations, couple metric tons of cocaine, I thought. I pulled my sweater down to cover myself.
Ambo tipped the omnipresent Stetson farther back on his head and whistled. “Christ, son. Don’t you never eat?”
“I’m sorry?” I had been expecting a question about the scars. Had my car crash story all ready to go. The Burn Unit. Intensive Care. Sadistic hospital nurses with fangs and forked tails. You know. The usual.
Ambo patted his belly. “You look half-starved, boy.”
Pitt felt my rib cage. His finger traced the injured rib.
“Eating’s not really my thing,” I said. Did Ambo really not notice? Or maybe he was just being nice. A thumb dug into the bump where the bone had split. I made a noise.
Pitt sat back in his chair. “I got just the thing for that.”
“Pitt.” Lynn. The voice a warning.
“Herbal remedy, Mother. Purely medicinal.”
“Not here. Not now. We have a guest?” She gestured at me with her cigarette.
Pitt shrugged, smacked my rib cage. I opened my mouth but held on to the pain, not wanting to share it.
He said, “You’ll live.”
I took a deep breath. “Not serious, then?”
“Standard case of surfer’s chest.”
The maid came out with a pitcher of ice water. Conversation stopped while she filled our glasses.
“Que tenemos hoy?” Lynn asked.
“Ceviche, señora.” The maid put the pitcher down, studied her fingernails. She twisted her hands behind her back and marched off unbidden.
“Funny how I’m never consulted on the menu, don’t you think?” Lynn said in the direction of the ocean.
Ambo put his elbows on the table. Asked me, “You like ceviche?”
Pitt came to my rescue. He lifted his glass of beer. “Who doesn’t like a bit of raw fish?”
Ambo laughed, pounded the table with his fist. The crockery trembled.
The maid returned carrying a large platter. Dropped it in the center of the table. Bang. She slopped mounds of raw fish on our plates. Could have been a prison matron feeding convicts roach-flecked oatmeal. A bottle of white wine rested in an ice bucket. A flick of her wrist, a deft twist of a corkscrew, and she drowned our glasses in vino, until they overflowed onto the table and dripped between the slats onto our toes.
I took a bite of the marinated seafood, a mixture of fish, conch and crab. Ambo shoveled large spoonfuls into his mouth until his cheeks bulged. Pitt poked at his with a fork. Lynn nibbled, a Scandinavian parakeet. I put my fork down, sat back, drank beer.
Ambo swallowed a gargantuan mouthful and belched. He wiped his lips with the back of his knuckles. “Not a fan?”
“Like I said, I don’t really eat.”
“You must eat something.”
I drained my beer and waved it at the maid, who snatched the empty from my hand and sulked off back to the kitchen.
Ambo laced his fingers together, lowered his eyebrows. “You do eat, don’t you?”
“Mostly junk food,” I said. Eating healthy used to be an obsession. These days, the quantity of cocaine I consumed pretty much numbed all desire to eat. When I did, it was hamburgers, potato chips, Inca Kola. All of which made me feel like shit. Which was the point.
The maid brought me another beer. She slammed it down next to my plate so hard that foam shot from the neck of the bottle, pegged her in the eye. She went rigid, wiped the suds from her eyelid. No one dared laugh.
“Let’s get this boy some real food,” Ambo said, staring at the maid’s firm thighs. He aimed an open palm at her muscular bicep. “Bring out the dips.”
Pitt swallowed a mouthful of fish, put a hand in his pocket and drew out a plastic bag and some rolling papers.
Lynn looked at Ambo, at Pitt. “You aren’t going to let him toke. Right here. In front of me.” She waved her wrist in my direction. “In front of us.”
Ambo shrugged, lit a cigarette. “You toke too. Don’t be such a hypocrite.”
She stood, glared at us. “So now I’m a hypocrite, is that it?”
She finished her martini, and replaced the glass on the table. It shattered with a sharp crack. She studied the broken stem, as though unsure of her own strength, then lay the empty glass down sideways.
Pitt said, “But, Mom, you’ll miss the dips.”
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
He held up a half-rolled joint. “Got the cure for that right here.”
Lynn nearly ran into the maid, who held a large glass punch bowl in each hand, bags of corn chips under each arm. The two women swayed back and forth, a wordless contest to see who would triumph, until Lynn seized the maid by the waist, shoved her to one side and left the patio.
Pitt called after her, “Come on, Mom. Relax. Take a toke already!”
In reply, the sound of slamming doors echoed from the house. Pitt chuckled, shook his head, licked the seam of the joint. There was a momentary quiet.
An earthquake shook the table. The maid had deposited the two punch bowls in front of us. “Guacamole.” She stabbed a manicured fingernail at each in turn. “Salsa.” She hurled the corn chips between the bowls, as though determined to reduce them to dust.
I liked guacamole. I had told Pitt that once. It was one of the few things I enjoyed eating. That was why I usually avoided eating it.
“You’re trying to fatten me up,” I said. I scooped a glob of guacamole the size of an apple onto a shard of a chip, shoved it in my mouth.
“Can’t have you starve to death, now can we?” Ambo said.
“Worse ways to die,” I mumbled around the crashing of the chip disintegrating against my molars.
Pitt put the joint to his lips, lit it, and took a long drag. He held it out to me.
I shook my head. “Not my style.”
He exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “Uppers are good. But you’re on vacation. You need to relax.”
Then why did we bring a kilo of coke? I was tempted to ask.
He nodded again, as though drumming the bass backbeat to an unheard song. He held the burning tip under my chin, the smoke tickling my nose. I took it.
It had been a while since I last toked. Better days, better times. The joint dangled between my fingertips. I could feel the heat. The wet seam hissed where Pitt had sealed it with his tongue. I put the joint to my lips, inhaled.
Burning marijuana filled my lungs. I held it in, feeling the particulate matter stick to my insides. The drug hit me, melting me, a puddle of contentment and hunger. I closed my eyes. I took another hit, and the puddle deepened, and I reclined in the mud bath of artificial happiness.
Opening my eyes, I stepped into the past. A black-and-white past. There I was in the back room of a frying pan factory, a shiny Chinese face bending over me as I rubbed cocaine on my gums. Thick bundles of black hair spewed sideways from his ears. A blue Cubs cap shaded the man’s priest-like smile. In my shirt pocket, a thick wad of money. I blinked. A glossy past, not matte. White edges surrounded the vision. My plate glistened in the sun around it.
I picked up the photo. Ambo sat forward in his chair, elbows on the table, a cigarette horn burning at his right temple. His eyelids drooped low, watching me. I turned to Pitt. He sat with his legs crossed, fingering his shark-tooth necklace. He looked at his lap.
“The fuck is this?” I asked.
“Hak Po.”
“I know who it is. What’s he doing on my plate?”
Ambo didn’t answer.
“Pitt?”
He shrugged. He didn’t look at me. “It wasn’t my idea. I swear.”
I flipped the photo across the table. It landed on top of Ambo’s ceviche, splattering fish juice on his lime-green polo shirt. I dropped the joint in my wineglass. It hissed and went out, a paper fish drowning i
n Chardonnay.
“We need your help,” Ambo said.
“You never thought to just ask?”
His eyelids didn’t flicker. “You’d say no.”
Pitt sighed. “Dad. Give him a chance.”
“A chance to what?” I asked.
Ambo lifted a basketball from under his chair, held it upside down with one large hand. “Help your country. Stay out of jail. Maybe make some money on the side.”
“Are you threatening me?” I said. I stood. “Fuck you, alright?”
Ambo raised his voice. “What about your country, Horace?”
“My country?” I said. “Do it for the red, white and blue, star-spangled banner and apple pie à la mode watching drones kill innocent women and children, the NSA spying on people, the concentration camp at Gitmo, and you assholes torturing and killing dissidents?” I panted for breath. Pitt’s mouth hung open. Ambo didn’t move. “Fuck my country,” I said. “I’ve got no country.”
Pitt touched my forearm. “Come on, bro. Just listen to him. What he’s got to say.”
“You part of this bullshit?”
“Honest to God, man. I swear.”
“Then what the fuck?”
“Just listen, OK?”
I sat down again. “So talk.”
Ambo held the basketball skyward. “Hak Po.”
“What about him.”
“You buy your coke from him.”
“Sure.”
Ambo turned suddenly, raised his eyebrows. “Nothing else?”
“Don’t need another frying pan.”
“Trust him with your life?”
I snorted. “Wouldn’t trust him with a glass of milk.”
Ambo stood and stretched, his wingspan a reminder of the pro basketball player he once was. He palmed a second ball, held them both out at his sides, a bald black statue, bright orange buoys to left and right.
“Tell him, son.”
Pitt swallowed a mouthful of guacamole. He looked at his plate. He cleared his throat.
“Hak Po. Born Lima, 1970. Parents fled Cultural Revolution in China. Moved to La Paz, Bolivia, as a child. Parents owned a corner store. Attended university, La Paz. This is when, we believe, he was recruited by the Chinese Secret Service. On their way to his graduation, his parents died when their bus went off a cliff.” He shrugged, not looking at me. “Happens a lot in Bolivia.”
The munchies hit me, a pile driver in my gut. Weeks and months of unsatisfied hunger had been unleashed by the unexpected marijuana hit. I pulled the guacamole bowl closer, began eating with both hands.
“So,” I said, spitting flecks of food as I spoke, “Hak Po’s a spy. So what?”
“He’s running agents in Peru,” Pitt said.
“I should give a shit, exactly why?” I shoved a mutant double corn chip in my mouth, loaded with pureed avocado.
“Horse, come on.” Pitt punched me in the shoulder. “Someone at the mine is selling secrets. Hak Po is the middle man. Production info, important stuff.”
“Fucking gooks.” Ambo dribbled a ball, let the second bounce free. He faked a jump shot at a nonexistent basket. His snakeskin boots scuffled against the brick patio deck.
Pitt said, “We need to find out who his contact is.”
“You got security at the mine, don’t you?”
“Of course.” Pitt sat back, scratched his hairless chest.
A bottle of single malt cozied up to Ambo’s plate. I cracked the seal and drank from the bottle. “So search all your employees when they leave. That’s what they do in diamonds, right?”
“That’s—”
“—classified.” Ambo crushed the ball between his hands. The ball echoed, a mournful ping.
Pitt grinned. “It has to be one of two people. Australian or Brazilian. Engineering exchange techs.”
“Fine,” I said. “But what’s that got to do with me?”
Pitt scooped a handful of ice from the wine bucket, crammed an empty highball glass full, put it in front of my plate. “Backwash, dude.”
“Sorry.” I poured liquor into the glass, put the bottle back on the table.
“Suffice it to say,” Ambo said, hustling around the empty half of the patio, the basketball in one hand, a cigarette dangling from his lips, “we did not make the same offer to the Chinese.”
“These exchange techs. Sort of legal spies, as it were,” I said.
Pitt filled another glass with ice. He covered the ice with Scotch. He didn’t look at me.
Ambo sat down again, breathing hard, puffing smoke. He rested the ball on his thigh, thick forearm dangling on top. “One of these guys is wearing out his welcome.”
I drained my glass. “I know the feeling,” I said. “So why don’t you just interrogate them both?”
“Because one of them is innocent, Horse,” Ambo explained patiently. “It would cause a diplomatic incident.”
“So what am I supposed to do about it?”
Pitt pulled a white envelope from the back pocket of his jeans. He opened it, extracted a small white button. He put it down on the table with a soft click.
“Sew this onto your shirt. One with long sleeves. Loose, so it hangs by a thread. Next time you visit Hak Po, let the button fall to the ground, against the wall or under a desk, somewhere dark and dusty. Fisheye lens. Sees everything. Doesn’t matter where you drop it.”
I picked it up. “Looks like an ordinary button to me.”
Pitt grinned. “That’s the idea.”
I put the button down. “And once you find the guy…this spy…he’s going to have an…accident, is that it?” I glanced at Pitt.
He fiddled with his drink. “Something like that, yeah.”
I considered this. Listening to Pitt’s murders was one thing. Participating was something else entirely. Was I really prepared to go there?
“So that’s it?” I said. “That’s all you want?”
Ambo scooped up a handful of chips. “That’s it, kiddo.”
I stood, picked the black-and-white photo out of his ceviche. “This picture.”
They looked at each other. “What about it?” Ambo said.
“This was taken in Hak Po’s office.”
Pitt frowned at his single malt.
“You’ve already got a bug in there,” I said. “What do you need me for?”
Ambo cleared his throat. Pitt held out a warning hand.
“Hak Po’s a clever guy,” Pitt said.
“That’s true.” I remembered the first time I’d bought coke from him. My first kilo ever. He’d overcharged me three hundred percent. The next time I harangued him for an hour, until he lowered the price for his “new special customer.”
Pitt pursed his lips. “He found the bug. The last one.”
“The camera that took this photo.”
“Yes.”
I narrowed my eyes, looked down at Pitt. He tapped a fingernail against his glass. Again he refused to meet my gaze.
“What happened to the guy who put it there?” I asked.
Pitt drained his Scotch, reached for the bottle. Ambo knocked his hand away.
Ambo said, “We need someone he knows. Who he trusts. Someone he would never suspect.”
I lifted the bottle of Scotch. Ambo took away his hand. I filled Pitt’s glass until it overflowed, then put the bottle to my lips and drank until it was half-empty, long gulps cascading down my throat. I came up for air, liquid fire churning inside me.
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Why should I help you? Why should I care?”
Ambo fondled the basketball. He bounced it against his chin. “I got to spell it out for you?”
“I was never very good at spelling.”
“Alright.” Ambo tapped the photo in my hand. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want Hak Po to see this picture. Might think you were one of us.”
I shrugged. “So tell him.” I pushed my chair back from the table. It fe
ll over. “That’s all you got, you better think again.”
Pitt touched my forearm, almost a caress. “I don’t think you understand.”
I jerked my arm away. “What’s to understand?”
“Hak Po and his people, they will hurt you. They will kill you.”
“Great,” I said. “Sounds like a plan. You got a phone here I can borrow?”
Ambo frowned. “What for?”
“Find me an undertaker.”
Pitt sat forward now, his face contorted in concern. Real or faked? It was impossible to tell. “You know what they did to the guy who planted that camera?”
“Pitt—”
“Shut up, Dad. They broke his kneecaps, is what.”
“Why didn’t they just kill him?”
“No,” Ambo said. “They don’t kill you. At least not right away. They understand suffering. They understand pain. Death is too easy. Too simple. They prefer to hurt you in ways you’ll never forget.”
Pitt took a big gulp of his Scotch. “They don’t like being double-crossed.”
I looked at him, searching for a sign, some confirmation of sincerity. “Neither do I.”
Pitt’s lips quivered. His eyes dropped to his lap. “Please, Horse.” Were those tears in his eyes? The big bad CIA assassin himself? “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“You forgot one thing,” I said.
Ambo dropped the basketball in his lap. He bridged his fingertips. “Oh? What’s that?”
“A man without his legs can always crawl.” I tore the photo in half and dropped it into the salsa. “Closer to the ground where he belongs.”
The two of them exchanged glances. Pitt stared at the ground.
“You know, Horse,” Ambo said casually, “you’re an illegal immigrant to Peru.”
Panic stabbed me in the gut. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Your ex-wife is badgering the State Department to get you home. Seems you owe back child support.”
Red spots filled my vision. “For a kid who isn’t even mine!”
He shrugged. “Whoever said life was fair?”
I tipped the table over. Wineglasses, half-eaten plates of ceviche, and two enormous bowls of guacamole and salsa smashed to the bricks. Ambo jumped out of the way. I staggered toward the house.
Pitt grabbed my elbow. “It’s not what you think.”
I threw my elbow back, hoping to connect with his face, but managed only to break his grip. “Then what the fuck is it? This your idea? Pretend to be my friend, then stab me in the back?”