by J. M. Porup
A drop of blood ran down into my pants.
“That all?” he asked.
I returned his gaze. “That’s all.”
“You no lie Hak Po?” he asked quietly. “You no want me make you nice sausage?” Another nick.
I stiffened. “Swear on my dead daughter’s grave.”
His eyes widened. “A terrible swear.” He let go of me and stepped back. “You have dead daughter? What happen?”
I collapsed against the countertop, stuffed myself back into my pants. Sorry, Lili, I thought. A false oath damns a man how many times?
“I’d rather not say.”
He shaved the back of a knuckle with the meat cleaver.
“Say.” He frowned. “Say.”
“It happened in La Paz,” I mumbled. “She died.” I put the cocaine on the counter and covered my face with my hands. “It was my fault.”
Hak Po listened to me sob. He patted my shoulder. “I believe. Here.”
He presented me the bag of sugar. Yay. Enthusiasm. Not. I dug my finger into the bag and shoved it up my nose. What remained of my septum went numb. So did the memory.
I sighed and licked my finger. “That’s better. Thanks, Hak.”
He bobbed his head, meat cleaver twitching at his side. “Price go up.”
“Since when?”
“Exterminators expensive. Cost of business more.”
“How much more?”
He smiled. “How much you got?”
I wiped my nose with my forearm. Now was not the time to negotiate. I stuck my hand down the back of my pants, dragged out a bundle of used American twenty-dollar bills. Pitt had given me the money that morning.
“Make sure you kill them all,” I said.
“Not just kill.” The meat cleaver hung low in his fist. “Exterminate.”
He took the money, planted the meat cleaver back in the chopping board, started counting the wad of dirty bills.
I still held the bag in my hand. “Got something I can carry it in?”
“Do some shopping.”
He twitched his head toward the opposite kitchen counter. Mountains of food threatened avalanche: kilo bags of white rice, boxes of black tea, powdered milk, canned tomatoes. A roll of plastic grocery bags sat to one side.
Hak Po flicked through the cash. I filled a shopping bag with the assorted goods on the counter.
I held up the bag of coke. “You got tape?”
“By your head,” he said, still counting.
Attached to an upper cabinet at eye level was a clear plastic tape dispenser. I ripped off some tape and sealed the bag, nestled it next to the rice.
I fingered my shirt cuff. Hak was counting the money a second time. Was it worth the risk?
Come home without planting the bug, dude, and you’re on the next plane back to the States. Drop a button, win a prize! Pitt laughed at that. Carrot and stick, dude. I know it sucks. Don’t blame me. This is Ambo talking.
“Been a while I see you,” he said. “Where you get money?”
The kitchen floor was clean. It gleamed with a recent coat of wax. The button was white, the floor black. There was nowhere to hide it.
“Rich uncle I know. Name of Samuel.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Samuel. That funny name.”
I pinched the button and stray thread, yanked.
“Isn’t it, though?”
I coughed, dropped the button to the floor.
Hak Po deposited the money into a hidden pocket of his apron. He looked at the floor, up at me.
“You drop something.”
“What I drop?”
He walked over, poked the button with his shoe. “You drop button.”
Think fast. I checked my shirt. “Isn’t mine.”
“No?”
He ran his fingertips along my shirtfront, touched the collar, lifted my wrists, turning them to show the buttons. He grunted.
“Paranoia, dude,” I said.
“Paranoia good for business.”
Hak Po knelt and scraped the floor with the meat cleaver. He lifted the button to eye level, the edge of the cleaver an inch from my nose.
“Better you take button with.”
He held the cleaver there, the thin line of the knife dividing his eyes from the rest of his face. He held my gaze, his eyes unwavering, studying mine. Tripe juice dripped on my shoes.
I laughed. “Don’t know what your game is, dude, but I ain’t taking what ain’t mine.”
The blade touched the tip of my nose. He frowned. “Really not you?”
I shook my head. “Really not me.”
Hak Po stood straight, lowered the cleaver. The frown, however, stayed intact. “Someone else, then.”
My head bobbed of its own volition. “Someone else.”
We looked at the button resting on the side of the meat cleaver.
“Better throw away,” he said.
He walked over to the sink and turned on the faucet, flicked the switch for the garbage disposal. The room filled with the growl of that insatiable mechanical demon.
“Wait.” I crossed the room, caught the button as it slid from the cleaver, my hand over the gaping maw of the garbage disposal. “Don’t you want to know who put it there?”
Hak Po shut off the disposal, turned off the water. “What you mean?”
“Maybe it’s a test. See if you’d notice.”
“I notice. You see I notice.”
I shrugged. “Maybe another customer. If you didn’t notice, then they’d plant a real bug.”
His eyes bulged from his head, his jaw clenched. “Find them.”
“Yes.”
“Who did it.”
“Yes.”
He went back to the wooden chopping board, seized the tripe and in great strokes slashed at the intestines, cleaver high overhead, thunking down onto the wood.
“Find them. Hurt them. Teach them.”
“Teach them, yes.”
“Not to—” Thwack! “—fuck with—” Thwack! “—Hak—” Thwack! “—Po!”
I pulled a piece of tape from the dispenser, pressed the button to the sticky side. I held up the tape for him to see.
“What you do is this.”
I pressed the tape to a cupboard at eye level, just over the stove. The white button stood out as a blemish against the surface of the black cupboard.
“Yes,” Hak Po said, slammed the cleaver into the wood. He slapped me on the back. “We teach them lesson.”
“Wait for the guilty face.”
“The guilty one, yes.” His arm was tight around my shoulder.
“See guilty face,” I said. “Hurt guilty face.”
I winked at the button. Hak Po saw the movement.
“You OK? Want some drops? I got drops. Drops right here.”
“It’s alright. Just something in my eye.” I rubbed it with my finger. “It’ll be fine. I should get going.”
He pointed at the mess of food and soda on the floor. “But you eat nothing, Horse!”
I rubbed my stomach. “Not so hungry.”
Hak Po shrugged his shoulders. “Insult chef. See I care.”
“You know how it is.”
“Too much snort-snort. Not good for you.”
I scratched my nostril. “Never said it was.”
Hak Po escorted me through the factory, past the presses and the cauldrons glowing orange, back to the dusty shop. He unlocked the front door. Held out a hand.
“Always pleasure do business with honest man.”
I shook his hand. It was dry and leathery, as though the entire covering of skin was about to peel. I tried to smile, but the muscles refused to obey.
“What would I do without you, Hak?”
He inclined his head, and I stepped into the street. The evening darkness accumulated on street corners, and against the graffiti-stained walls. The damp smog cloaked me in welcome pollution as I walked down the street. A black-haired woman emerged from the sooty mist. A well
-dressed limeña. Must have been a beauty once. Now prematurely aged. My stomach revolted, and I bent over, vomited on her shoes, remnants of yesterday’s junk-food binge coating her elegant patent-leather flats.
The woman gripped her purse tight. “Think I’d fall for that?” She stepped around me, marched off down the street, heels retreating. I sat there on my hands and knees for a long moment, the grocery bag at my side. The heels came clacking back. An explosion of pain made me double over. She kicked me in the stomach a second time, this time connecting with my still-broken rib.
“Asshole,” she hissed.
Evening commuters stepped over me where I lay, another Lima bum. When rush hour was over, I got to my feet, clutching the grocery bag at my side. At the corner I hailed a passing mini-bus. I jumped the turnstile, thrust a few stained notes in the driver’s direction. He cursed me for a gringo dog; I told him his mother was of dubious moral virtue. I squeezed down the narrow aisle and sat on the wheel hump. I ignored the grim faces of the other passengers, each intent on his own losing struggle with life.
From time to time I looked out the back window. When the bus ground to a halt in the middle of downtown traffic, I hopped off. Outside a hotel I spotted a cab rank. A well-fed American with a double chin stood holding a door open. He wore a plaid check suit and a large Panama hat.
“I don’t care if you’re fucking the bellboy, honey, got to hurry now, or we’ll miss our flight!”
I ducked under his arm into the back of the cab, fished a fifty-dollar bill from my rotting jeans, held the money over the seat to the driver. He grinned.
“Where to?”
“Miraflores. No rush.”
The cab rolled forward, pulled free of the man’s hand. He shouted after us, ran a few steps, arms gesticulating like some kind of a puppet. The last I saw of him, he was resting his palms on his knees, panting for breath. The driver looked at me in the rear-view mirror.
“You in hurry.”
“Just drive.”
When we started the slow crawl down Avenida Larco, I checked over my shoulder. No tail that I could see.
I draped an arm over the front seat. “Parque Municipal, Barranco.”
The driver held up the note I’d given him. “Don’t expect no change, then.”
“From you? It’d be counterfeit.”
The cab dropped me off at the park.
“Fuck you and your mother,” he called after me.
I slapped the roof of the cab. “Please forget to use a condom.”
He peeled off, the muffler belching a cloud of dark gas in my face. I took a deep breath, held it, let it out in a long thin stream. Almost as good as a joint.
I strolled along the disco strip, past the whores and the pussy-collecting gringo tourists, until I came to the Rat’s Nest. In the basement bar I ordered a Cusqueña Dark. I paid the bartender, surveyed the room. I had met Lynn here. The beer was cold and sweet. In a corner, a gringo slouched in a chair facing the television. A bullfight flickered on screen. The gringo wore a black baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. I walked over, sat down opposite.
“Didn’t know you were a Pirates fan,” I said. “They teach you that in spy school? Wear a baseball cap, no one’s going to notice?”
Pitt sucked on his beer, wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “So how’d it go?”
“You play this stupid game. Hurting people. Risking lives. Killing, raping, torturing. For what? The Lincoln Memorial and ‘God Bless America’?”
He lifted his eyes to the bullfight. The banderilleros had done their job well. The bull bled from the hump, its head lowered. The matador reentered the ring, sword in hand.
“You never think that what you do is wrong?” I asked. “Oh wait. I forgot. You don’t have a conscience. How convenient.”
In the dark of the barroom, I almost thought I saw him blush. His eyes did not flinch from the screen.
“It went OK, then?” His voice was calm, resolute.
I finished my beer. I lifted my hand, snapped my fingers at the bartender. “Another one?”
“You’re still alive. Guess Hak Po didn’t catch you, huh?”
I held up two fingers, pointed at Pitt. The bartender nodded. He put two beers on the bar, cracked the lids with a bottle opener, brought them over. He stood at our table, looking down at us, an ominous presence, judgment day come early.
“Your turn, dude,” I said.
Pitt frowned. He arched his pelvis, pulled a wallet from his front jeans pocket.
“No,” I said. “I mean my fucking passport. And the bank account you promised?” Enough to pay for sixteen years of child support.
Pitt fished out some play money, paid the bartender. “We need to talk about that.”
My grip on the beer bottle tightened. The bartender glowered at us, as though charging us with centuries of crimes against his people. Finally he left.
“What’s there to talk about?” I hissed. “You promised!” Panic bubbled inside of me like lava.
The matador lifted himself on tiptoe, sighting down the blade, the sword hilt held high, point low.
“First things first,” he said. “Did you have any trouble?”
“I planted the fucking button, if that’s what you mean.” I took a long swig of my beer. “He knows you’re a spy, by the way. Almost cut my dick off with a meat cleaver.”
Pitt dipped his finger in the condensation on the table, doodled. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He added, “Sorry about that.” Almost shyly.
“How do you know that?”
He held up a PDA he’d been watching under the table. It showed a button’s-eye view of Hak Po, cleaver in hand, singing to himself in Chinese, obliterating what remained of the tripe.
“You watched the whole thing?”
“You were awesome. ‘Find guilty face.’” Pitt smiled, sipped his beer. “I nearly pissed myself.”
I aimed the bottom of my beer bottle at the ceiling, emptied it down my throat. I picked up my grocery bag, pushed back my chair.
I said, “I’ll take what’s owed me now.”
He plucked at his lower lip. “Ambo wants to use you again, for another op.”
“Is that how it is?”
A shrug. “Blackmail starts, it never ends.”
“It ends with me.” I pulled out a kilo bag of rice and flung it at his chest. White grains exploded across the table and the floor. “Fuck you and Ambo both.”
“C’mon, man. Don’t be like that.” His voice crooned, the insistent softness the best salesmen possess, the vocal tremolo that coaxes the wallet from your pocket and the panties off your girlfriend.
The bullfighter and bull came together in a sudden desperate act of lust: the sword penetrated through the hump, deep into the beast’s body, into its heart, two primal creatures united for a fleeting instant in an act of ferocious love.
I shook my head. “I told you on the beach. We’re done. Goodbye.”
The bull stumbled. It spun in a half circle, looked at the crowd in astonishment, and collapsed, hooves twitching. The matador held up his open palms in triumph. I pounded my way to the door, my flip-flops slapping against the wooden floor. Footsteps behind me. A hand on my elbow. I bent at the knees, turned and slammed my fist upward into his stomach.
Pitt doubled over. He opened his mouth. He took a breath.
“I deserved that,” he said.
The bartender stood watching us, a tea towel in one hand, a half-dried beer mug in the other.
“Yes,” I said. “You did.”
TWELVE
I woke screaming from my nightmare. The old lady next to me on the bus smacked me in the face with her handbag. It smelled like moldy cheese.
“Gracias,” I said. “I needed that.”
Withdrawal raged inside me, an empty hole demanding to be filled. I stared out the window at the gorges below, tried to remain calm. The bus crept its way along the side of the cliff. The television blared crash-bash-smash directly over head. In
the window’s reflection I could see the man, the beak of his red cap lifted in challenge.
This whole thing pissed me off. Bastards let me go, why? Just so they could follow me? They think I knew where Pitt was? Was that it? Let Horse run. But keep him on a leash, see where he takes you.
I looked over my shoulder. There he was, the red cap perched on his head, flecks of hair sticking out over his ears. He stared back at me, unflinching. The man sitting next to him got up, went downstairs to the lavatory. I lurched from my chair, stepped across the old woman. The cheese smell lingered in my clothing. I walked three rows back and dropped into the empty seat.
“So you’re a spook,” I said.
“Sorry, what’s that?” He removed an earplug.
“I said, you’re CIA.”
He looked puzzled. “You mean like a spy or something?”
I pointed ahead at my seat. “Following me. Watching me. Looking at me all the time.”
He laughed. “You got the wrong man.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Sounds to me like you’re paranoid.”
He reached up to put the earplug back in, but I knocked his wrist away.
“Then what are you—” I shouted, lowered my voice as heads turned. “What the fuck are you doing staring at me?”
A long arm pointed in the direction of my seat.
“Exactly,” I said.
The arm didn’t waver, finger extended. He pointed at the television over my seat. Some kind of shootout was in progress. Its relevance to the plot was tenuous.
I let go of his arm. “Then what are you going to Cuzco for?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m asking you.”
“Take the train to Machu Picchu. Hello?”
“Disculpe, amigo. Está en mi puesto,” said a voice from the aisle. A campesino in a green poncho tapped me on the shoulder.
I cleared my throat. Stood up. “Sorry,” I said. “Don’t know what to say.”
Red Cap tapped the side of his nose, winked. “Go easy on the white stuff, eh?”
The road wound in hairpin turns through the mountains. The movement helped keep me awake. I maintained my vigil all day long and into the night, the curtains propped open with my foot, staring at the barren, ugly scenery of Peru, unchanging for hours on end. The front wheel of the bus crunched against the gravel verge, sending rocks tumbling over the cliff. If I was going to die here, the bus jumping off the highway into a brief pause before death came, I wanted to be awake to experience that momentless twitch of eternity.