The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller

by J. M. Porup

  Just when I thought I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, the bus pulled off the road at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Chickens clucked and scattered in the headlights as the bus came to a halt. My ears popped. The driver stood and announced a meal break. A concrete hovel squatted under the glare of a solitary streetlight. The old woman beside me got up, joined the stampede down the stairs and out the door into the dirt at the side of the road.

  I waited. Now was my chance. Villega put me on the bus, but he sure as hell couldn’t keep me on it. I patted the volunteering office’s brochure in my pocket. The police had confiscated my switchblade and fake passport. Somehow I had to get to Puno and Lake Titicaca. Cross the border into Bolivia somehow. It was the logical next step in my search for Pitt. But there was no reason I had to go through Cuzco to get there.

  I stood. Red Cap was heading down the stairs. He took an earplug from his ear. He said in a voice louder than necessary, “Come grab a bite?”

  “Do so at your own risk,” I said.

  “It’s OK,” he said, and laughed. “I got my dehydration salts with me.” For diarrhea.

  “Well that’s a comfort,” I said.

  I followed him off the bus. The driver was waiting for me. He locked the door, pulled me aside.

  “Don’t go wandering off, friend,” he said. “They asked me to keep an eye on you.”

  “Who did?” I said. “Who’s they?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? For that kind of money I’d fuck my own mother. Now eat something. It’s another twelve hours to Cuzco.”

  “Twelve hours?” I said. “We’ve already been on the road for fourteen.”

  “You don’t like it, complain to the bus company,” he said, and walked off, chuckling under his breath.

  I meandered into the small restaurant, past walls of dusty bags of potato chips. Cigarettes filled plastic display cases. I could kill for a smoke, but I only had fifteen soles left. The smell of charcoal meat filled the room from a grill just outside. There were no windows, just holes in the walls. It was cold at this altitude. Skewers of meat sizzled over the coals. Anticucho. Grilled beef heart. Tough as shoe leather, and less tasty. I dropped my last coins into the vendor’s hand and he proudly held out two sticks of half-burnt, half-raw meat.

  The passengers milled around outside the restaurant, smoking, drinking beer, masticating their anticucho. The bus would be here for half an hour, at least. I wandered through the crowd, making a point of being seen, the sticks of anticucho in one hand, my jaws grinding away at the big ball of meat in my cheek. I could hear the people gossip about the shabbily dressed gringo who smelled bad.

  When I was sure the bus driver had seen me, I clutched my stomach and rushed off to the side of the road, just beyond the glow of the light from the restaurant. I spat out the meat and stuck my fingers down my throat. Gagged loudly. Sounds of disgust. Another gringo with a delicate stomach.

  I crept farther from the light. No one followed. I jogged off for a few hundred meters, fell back to a walk. Talk about not being in shape. Thought I’d have a heart attack. I rounded the bend in the highway until I was out of sight of the diner. A pair of headlights approached from where I’d just come. A car. Perfect. I stuck out my thumb. Maybe I’d get lucky.

  The car got closer. White with stripes. Lights flashed on the roof. Shit. I dropped my thumb. The car rolled to a halt beside me. The cop shone a flashlight in my face, blinding me. He said, “Get in.”

  “What for?”

  “Get in the fucking car, jackass.”

  I walked around. Got in the front passenger seat. Just to piss him off. Something big and shiny flashed in the cop’s hand. My eyes were still adjusting from the brightness of the flashlight, and I heard him cock the revolver before I realized that’s what it was. He pointed it at my head. Pressed the cold metal opening against my temple.

  “Here’s the deal, cockroach,” he said. “You get back on the bus. You stay on bus. Is that clear?”

  The man stank. Worse than I did. Moonlight slashed the windshield. He was Indian. Quechua, Aymara, who knew. Not that it mattered. Under the Incan Empire he would have been an enforcer for the king, strangling dissidents with his bare hands—someone like Pitt—or cutting throats in bloodthirsty rituals to the sun god. Now he was a little man who wished he lived in Miami and got to shoot people for a living, like he saw on TV.

  “Why are you people so goddamn obsessed with me going to Cuzco?” I asked.

  “I do what I’m told, gringo,” he said. “So should you.”

  He returned the gun to its holster. Swung the car around and drove back to the restaurant. He parked behind the cinder-block hovel. That’s why I hadn’t seen him. Note to self: check behind hovels for cops during bus trip meal breaks.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  He kept a hand on his gun. “That depends.”

  “Are you with the CIA?”

  The man stared at me. “Do not make fun of me, gringo,” he said. He poked my broken nose with his index finger, cocked his thumb.

  I flinched. “Then how did you know?”

  “Ah,” he said. “I see. I know a friend of yours.”

  My chest tightened. A friend of mine? No way he meant Pitt. I said, “Who would that be?”

  He pulled out a toothpick, flecked orange chunks from between his teeth against the inside of the windshield. “La policía. In Lima. I do him a favor, now he owes me.” He turned to me in the half light and I gasped. His nose was missing. Syphilis? Wild dog? Who knew. He saw my reaction.

  “Now get the fuck out of here.”

  Back on the bus, Red Cap said, “Have some trouble with the cops?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Wanted to know what you were up to.”

  He grinned. “You tell them?”

  “Sure,” I said, and shrugged. “But they didn’t believe me.”

  The bus crept toward Cuzco in low gear, grinding up the unforgiving mountain roads. I peered over the safety bar at the driver’s speedometer. It rarely exceeded forty kilometers per hour. Part of me wanted to get there already. Another part wanted the trip to never end, to never have to set foot in Cuzco again.

  For a brief moment, I had been happy there: a new life, my dream come true.

  Then a single act of recklessness destroyed it all.

  The day I met Kate she was bitching about her ex-husband. How much she loathed American men.

  It was hate at first sight.

  “Bunch of effeminate wusses. I want a man, not a fucking mouse. Hello. What’s your name?”

  I lurked at her side, a beer in my hand. We were at an expat barbecue in Cuzco. I liked the town. Liked the vibe. Wanted to open a hostel, have some fun. All those horny Eurotrash backpacker girls? New pussy every week. It was great.

  “Squeak squeak,” I said. “Squeak squeak.”

  “Oh I’m sorry,” she said, and crossed her arms. “Did I offend you?”

  “You couldn’t offend me if you tried.” I put my arm around her waist, whispered in her ear. “Name’s Horace. But people call me Horse. As in hung like a.”

  She glanced at my waist. “Are you really?”

  “Wouldn’t touch you with it, though, bitch. Fucking American cunts.”

  I laughed, and the other men at the party chuckled uncomfortably.

  That got her attention. “Why do you hate American women so much?”

  I drank my beer. It tasted good. “Why do you hate American men so much?”

  We were in bed together before the sun went down, and stayed there until well past noon the next day. She cancelled her plane ticket home. We opened the hostel together a month later. Talked about getting married. I even quit sleeping around.

  She teased me about it. “All the girls are jealous,” she said. “They want your horsie. Don’t they try to seduce you?”

  “Sure they do,” I said. “But we’re together, you and me. That would be wrong.”

  “Even if you k
new I’d never find out?”

  I nodded gravely. “Even then.”

  She never went on the pill. Don’t know why. Never really talked about it much. Problem is, condoms don’t fit me too well. Even the extra large is a bit on the small side. One day a condom broke.

  “I could get pregnant,” she said.

  “That’s OK,” I said quickly.

  She seemed surprised. “You sure?”

  I had spent two years loving a child that wasn’t mine. It was hard letting go. I wanted back what I had lost: a new wife, a new home, a new family.

  I stroked her back. “Sure,” I said. “I don’t mind at all.”

  Business boomed. We had to hire staff. Kate missed her period. Then another. Then another. And one day a baby popped out, and it was the most glorious day of my life. The gods who I had so long thought malevolent were smiling on me once again. I felt like I should sacrifice a small animal—a guinea pig, or maybe a chicken—by way of thanks.

  Maybe I should have.

  Lili’s grave called to me through time and space, an accusation hurled across four dimensions like a thunderbolt of Zeus himself. I longed for a lit cigarette, a lighter, a razor, something to alleviate the pain. I was reduced to giving myself paper cuts with my bus ticket. And failing.

  Dawn came again, a brilliant smear across the windshield. Made me squint. Two hours later we rolled into Cuzco. At the station, the Indians and backpackers scrambled to get off. Twenty-six hours locked in a double-decker bus with one overflowing toilet? Six hours more than scheduled. By then I wanted to get off, too. I stepped down the stairs into the early morning sunshine. It was cold, but warming fast. I put my hands in my pockets by instinct to ward off pickpockets, but realized I had nothing to steal. Or spend, for that matter.

  Despite the cold I was sweating. Colored spots swam across my vision. My brain felt like it was melting. My limbs trembled under my sweater. I needed money, cocaine and pisco, in that order. And fast.

  I looked around me. Things hadn’t changed much since Kate and I were here. That had been, what? A year ago? I sighed, plastered my don’t-fuck-with-me frown across my face. An essential accoutrement for the Cuzco experience. I hoped I wouldn’t meet her here. Those were happier times.

  The other passengers were engaged in a scrum for their luggage, then a mad dash for a taxi. I didn’t have any money, so I decided to walk into town. A block or two along Avenida del Sol, Cuzco’s main thoroughfare, a voice called after me.

  “Hey, wait up!”

  Red Cap chugged up behind me, full backpack swaying from side to side. I walked faster. He panted, trying to catch up, the air thin at this altitude.

  “Where you going?” he called out.

  “Where you think?”

  “I come with?”

  I about-faced. He jumped on tiptoe to avoid crashing into me.

  “No.”

  He hooked his thumbs under the pack straps, struggling to get his breath. Before he could say anything, I crossed the street. A taxi blared its horn, just missing me. Red Cap shrugged, held out a hand in salute. Another taxi stopped, and he got in.

  At the Plaza de Armas I turned left on Calle San Juan de Dios, ducked right on Calle Meloq, and walked up a steep hill. I panted to a halt in front of an ancient stone building. The sign over the door proclaimed it the Hostel Thor. A car door slammed shut behind me. Red Cap got out and puffed up the hill. He entered a cheap hotel farther down. I dove into the hostel. It was early afternoon. A dozen backpacks sat by the door, waiting for their outbound owners. The lobby was quiet.

  “Buenas tardes. En que puedo servirle?”

  A German girl talked Spanish at me. She had dimples in her cheeks and blue ribbons tied in bows around her braided hair, a prize pig at the county fair. Her breasts hung heavy, braless. I ignored her. I lifted the countertop, went behind the desk.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in English.

  I took the cash box from under the counter. I spun the key and opened it.

  “Scheiss, what the fuck?”

  I lifted the false bottom of the box.

  “Alex!” she shouted. “Al-EX!”

  “Yeah!” came the distant male reply.

  “Call the police!” She stood in the far corner, clutching a pen like a dagger.

  “Shut up, bitch,” I said. I flicked through the money, a mixture of US dollars and Peruvian play money. I rolled the money into a tight cylinder, shoved it deep in my jeans pocket. I put the tray back in the cash box, closed the countertop behind me.

  “You can’t do that!” she screamed.

  “I just did.”

  Footsteps ran along the corridor, slapping against the stone floors. A red face and crew cut appeared.

  “That is him!” the German girl yelled. “Right there!”

  He was six foot tall. Six foot two and a half in socks, to be precise. He ran at me, his broad chest aimed at my face. I braced for impact. He grabbed me in a hug, squeezed me to his chest, thumped me on the back. I beat my fists against his ribs until he let go.

  “The fuck, man?” he said. “It’s been how long?”

  The German girl stared, her heavy Teutonic tits sagging. “You know this guy, Alex?”

  Alex slapped me on the back. He put his arm around my shoulder. “Berta, baby, this guy owns a third part of the hostel.”

  “Guess that makes me your boss,” I said.

  “What’s up, man? You need a place to crash?”

  “Crash is right.”

  Alex went to the girl, caressed her bare arm. He kissed her cheek. “It’s cool, baby. Clear the honeymooners out of the presidential.”

  “Please don’t do that,” I said.

  “You deserve it, dude. You built this place from scratch, remember?” He jerked his head toward the hallway. “Come into my lair.” He laughed. “I mean, your lair.”

  The hostel was a three-hundred-year-old stone mansion. It had seen its share of Latin-chanting monks and sword-wielding Spaniards, plus the usual assortment of Indian slaves, North American vagabonds and cocaine addicts. Kate and I had bought the place from a company that wanted to demolish it.

  The building was structurally sound but otherwise a pigsty. Literally. We’d sold the swine and shoveled out their slop, laid new wooden floors in the rooms, built the kitchen, transformed it from nothing to something in a month flat. Alex was our first hire, and the only one who showed any real interest in the business. When things went bad between me and Kate, we sold him a third share in the business, let him manage the place.

  Alex sat down behind my old desk, pulled open a drawer. He took out two water glasses and a bottle of pisco, filled the glasses half-full. He held out a glass. I took it.

  He said, “Kate’s the same, you know.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Doesn’t want me to send her money.” He shook his head. “Your share is yours. I ain’t gonna touch it. Every month it goes into the bank.”

  I drank the glass of pisco and coughed. “Keep it,” I said, and wiped my lips with the back of my hand.

  Alex put his drink down untouched. “You mind I ask?”

  “Of course I mind.”

  “You’re in trouble.”

  “You fucking think?”

  Alex whistled. “You are wound up tight.”

  I poured myself a second glass, full this time. “Year in Lima does that to you.”

  He put his hand on top of my glass. “Easy, bro. It’s not your fault.”

  “Why does everyone keep telling me that?” I drank from the bottle. “Of course it’s my fault. Everything’s my fault. The whole fucking world.”

  “What happened to you could have happened to anyone.”

  “But it didn’t, did it? It happened to me. And I am dealing with it. And right now,” I said, and took his hand by the wrist, removed it from my glass, “right now I need a favor.”

  Alex rocked in his chair. It creaked. “Shoot.”

  “Need a train ticket. Ma
chu Picchu. For tomorrow.”

  He blinked. “In high season?”

  “Know where I can scalp one?”

  Alex sipped his pisco, grimaced. “Machu Picchu’s not your thing. Never was.”

  “It’s not a tourist visit.”

  He nodded. “How much you willing to pay?”

  “How much I got?”

  “From petty cash?” He gnawed his lower lip. “Around five hundred US. Enough.”

  I put my glass down empty. “You make it happen?”

  “Sure, man. Whatever. I’m always here, you need me.”

  Why had Alex and I never become friends? We had worked together. Liked each other. He was a good guy. He could have been the friend I needed. Maybe it was Kate. She was jealous of everyone, male and female. Oh well. Too late now.

  I stood. “I got a little thing I got to do.”

  “Sure,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” I avoided his gaze. “Just a thing. I got to do.” I stopped, bit my lip. “That is—”

  “Of course.” His open hand: say no more. “Remember how to get there?”

  I halted, my hand on the doorknob. “How could I forget?”

  My flip-flops smack-smacked against the worn bottoms of the hallway’s ancient flagstones, deep bowls of sorrow and longing, puddles of lost youth: long-dead adventurers now dust. The dark corridor vomited me forth into the modern computerized lobby. I waved to the Saxon princess, shot out into the bright mountain air.

  I humped my way down the hill, past the Plaza de Armas, past the touristy restaurants and the street vendors selling crap. I walked out of the center into the slums that surround Cuzco, corrugated tin hovels sheltering small brown faces embedded with impossibly bright eyes. The hovels got smaller and filthier the farther I got from the center.

  Then I was there.

  A rotting wooden fence like a corral served as the cemetery boundary. I found what I was looking for in the corner. Someone had dumped a pile of garbage on the grave: decomposing banana peels, eggshells, bits of broken glass, decayed chunks of llama offal.