Hot Sur

by Laura Restrepo

  It was an almost mythical scene of superhuman violence and infernal beauty, as memorable as Actaeon devoured by his raging hounds, the heads of Cerberus spewing fire, or the saga of Nastagio degli Onesti as interpreted by Botticelli.

  From his box of honor, like Caesar at the circus, Rose noted some revelations from human sacrifice, the clairvoyant terror emanating from the truth that is hidden in death, or something similar, the monstrous lucidity brought about by pain. He understood what Sleepy Joe had been looking for by opening such disgusting doors into the sacred, or the other way around, opening doors to the profane through the sacred. And what had been incomprehensible for Rose took on another color, as if suddenly and for a moment he looked at the situation from within, or crossed a threshold to be able to perceive certain things.

  “Don’t ask me what things, because they have no names,” he says. “Things that passed though me like an electric shock and then dissolved, like the images of a dream.”

  I ask Rose if he ordered his dogs to stop, for the release of the man he was about to kill. He is evasive in his response. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I doubt that after a certain time they would have obeyed.” I repeat the question, and then he admits that no, he never tried to stop them. They stopped themselves when the man gave up the struggle and froze. Then Rose, who had been standing at some distance, approached, the gun aimed at Sleepy Joe’s head.

  “You may say I’m a coward,” he tells me, “and I won’t argue with that. But still, wounded and torn apart as he was, the guy was still a threat. He still inspired fear, perhaps even more than before, bloody as he was, with that bone hanging out of his leg.”

  The dogs were done with their prey and took a few steps back, not breaking the circle or hiding their fangs, and something like a gurgle came out of Sleepy Joe’s throat. Was he asking for something? Mercy, or perhaps water? Rose thought it over. Give water to this vermin? He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Wasn’t vinegar customary in such cases?

  “I have coffee,” he said, and threw him the thermos.

  Sleepy Joe took a couple of sips and turned to look at Rose, his eyes staring as he tried to say something, but at that point the dogs’ growling drowned his words. Rose did not know how long this exchange was supposed to be, what, if any, things were supposed to be said. Drivel, really, while the blood ran out of Sleepy Joe’s leg and the dogs surrounded him and he stared up into the barrel of the gun. But Rose couldn’t quite finish it: he dared not kill the enemy, and that was extending this situation longer than necessary. Sleepy Joe there, wounded but alive, and the minutes passing, and Rose killing time because he did not dare kill Sleepy Joe. At one point, he was about to tell him that he was Cleve’s father, had the words on the tip of his tongue, but ultimately he didn’t. It disgusted him. Why stoop low with such a claim; the name of his son was untouchable, and to say it in front of his murderer would be to soil it. Best just to give this piece of garbage the coup de grâce and put an end to it. But Rose couldn’t do it.

  The silence of the mountain, until then absolute, was suddenly shattered by the blare of sirens. They were far away but they made Rose shudder, because he was forced to face the reality of the situation. A shot would be heard clearly down below, drawing the attention of the police.

  “As if my natural cowardice were not reason enough,” he tells me, “I had a new reason not to shoot: I did not want to attract the police. But then I realized that this factor was both against me and in my favor. And I made a decision, to set things up so others could finish off Sleepy Joe.”

  Rose would take a few shots in the air, and from there, the key would be in the timing: with the Glock and the help of the dogs, he would keep Sleepy Joe immobilized until the police were almost there, and then step aside to let things proceed. Not too far-fetched a plan, so he shot once, twice, three times in the air.

  And from that point began the surprises and necessary improvisations. First off, with the gunshots, the dogs scattered. Otto, Dix, and Skunko were good fighters, but unlike María Paz’s crippled doggie, these three would not qualify as war heroes. Secondly, Rose forgot a very important detail. Something he had neglected to do before the dogs fled.

  Rose forced himself to get closer to Sleepy Joe, the Glock held tightly in his right hand and pointed at the forehead. He felt horribly insecure without the support of his dogs, but at least he had the Glock. One step closer, another, jumping back every time the fallen man as much as stirred, and then forward again. The sirens were getting closer, and Rose hesitated, but then he made the risky move anyway, stretching his left hand out, with the finesse with which he would use chopsticks. A little closer and he could almost touch the guy, and then he rushed through the hardest part of the maneuver, which was bending over without giving Sleepy Joe an opening to strike him. A couple of inches more, and Rose’s hand dug into the clothes Sleepy Joe had left on the floor. The winter coat was pinned under the man’s weight. “Turn over, you fuck,” he yelled, feinting to shoot, and as Sleepy Joe stirred, Rose managed to kick the coat out of the way. And then he glimpsed a piece of what he was looking for: red canvas. He grabbed it and pulled it toward him in one swift move.

  It was the red backpack María Paz had bought at the last minute in Colorado.

  “And you remembered such a thing, just at that moment?” I ask.

  “Well, it was not like Sleepy Joe was in any position to have invested in stocks,” he tells me, “or to deposit it in the bank. So he had to have the money on him . . . And there it was, or the red backpack was there anyway. And judging by the weight, he had not spent much.”

  And then it was time to retreat without turning his back on the man even for a moment, undeterred by the sirens closing in. Alright. So far so good, as well as could be expected from someone who has leaped out of the seventeenth floor and was passing by the fifth floor or so. One step, pat pat, another little step, pat pat, back and away. Already at a safe distance, Rose started wiping the Glock with his shirt hem, a tricky maneuver, because at the same time he had to continue pointing it. And then, a moment later, at a safer distance, he threw the Glock as far as possible into the thicket so the cops wouldn’t find him armed and think he was the bad guy.

  Again the sirens, this time more than one, right on them almost: the cars must have come upon the Gift from God. Rose knew that in a few minutes he was going to have to take off and run. That was the trick; he would count to a hundred, then run for his life.

  But he did not count on the third and most grievously unexpected matter: a serious error in characterization. Rose had not counted on Sleepy Joe retaliating, given the sorry state he was in. But he did. He got up and started moving toward him, as if possessed, like the Incredible Hulk: a giant tortoise in his underwear, upright and wounded, his massive arms floating up as if separate from the body, the rather elfish head rising from his thick neck and coming out of the shell, meaning the shell of his torso bulging at the muscles on his chest and shoulders. It wasn’t hyperbole; this beast did indeed look like the Hulk, only not green but blue. Torturously dragging his shattered leg, but despite this handicap and the fact that he was unarmed, the age difference, the size, the weight training, and his newly invigorated state all played in his favor. And Rose, who was no longer twenty, and no longer had his dogs or the gun, began to fear the worst.

  “Jaromil!” he yelled as a desperate last resort.

  Hearing his real name, Sleepy Joe shrunk and squirmed like a slug sprinkled with salt. Who knows how many years it had been since someone had called him that?

  “Where is Danika Draha, Jaromil? You dried her up, Jaromil, you, such a big little baby sucking on your mommy’s tit.”

  An uppercut by Rose, not terminal but lethal, like David’s stone hitting Goliath. He won several seconds with the stupefaction that overcame Sleepy Joe, who until that moment must have wondered who this insignificant homunculus that set his dogs on him was, and could
n’t have cared less whether he was a gnome or a park ranger. But now he was suddenly stunned by this mysterious being who knew the name of his sainted mother.

  “He must have thought that he was dead and that I was God,” Rose tells me.

  But then Rose realized that his relative advantage was only momentary, because Sleepy Joe put two and two together and recognized him.

  “I know who you are,” he wailed. “You are the old asshole from the Catskills with the dogs.”

  A posteriori, Rose had made sense of things. He thought that ultimately it was not him who Sleepy Joe recognized, but the dogs, just as his dogs must have recognized Sleepy Joe, who during the days before killing Cleve must have prowled around the house in the Catskills, maybe unable to make it inside precisely because of the dogs, and hence nabbed John Eagles, who happened to be nearby, and ripped off his face. Then he waited for Cleve to go far from the house on his motorcycle to kill him.

  “It makes sense,” he tells me. “But back to the Hulk. I heard male voices getting closer and closer. Sleepy Joe advanced, staggering, arms akimbo, blinded by the blood that dripped from his forehead, but advancing, advancing toward me. The cops were coming down, I could see them, and I ran toward them, shouting, ‘He’s armed! He’s armed!’ And the cops signaled for me to get out of the way and safe from the crossfire. And they moved in, shooting from all different directions. Sleepy Joe continued to advance, but surprise, surprise, not toward me; apparently I was not his goal because he passed right by me, stumbling, blinded and lame, as if drunk, suicidal, arms open and chest exposed, right into the endless volley of gunfire.”

  And that’s it. Sleepy Joe fell, and nothing happened. The sky did not darken, torrential rain did not suddenly fall, the earth did not flinch nor stars cry. Nothing.

  The police noted the white cross, of course, impossible to miss, and they realized they had come upon the fugitive they had been after for days, the celebrated Passion Killer, the biggest catch in all the US of A.

  Ten or twenty minutes later, Rose, again surrounded by his dogs, played the part of the innocent neighbor who had gone for a walk on the mountain and been shot at by this man, and his dogs had jumped to the defense of their master. He answered a few routine questions from the lieutenant, who was friendly, euphoric even. There were several inconsistencies in Rose’s version of events that would have become known through a more thorough investigation, but the police were too excited about their own role in the case to worry about such things. “Thank you, lieutenant,” Rose said, squeezing his hand, “you saved me, thanks.”

  “I would have wanted to say more,” Rose admits. “To say, for example, not to boast, ‘Lieutenant, you brought down the man, but my dogs defeated the god.’ But I squeezed his hand, and said that other thing instead, which I’m pretty sure is why he let me go just like that. At the end of the day, things came out well because I stuck to my script, as if I were a minor character in CSI.”

  “Things could have turned out a lot worse,” I tell him.

  “True.” He laughs. “Fatally so. But there was a good turn in the end, you know. A string of mistakes that led to a final success.”

  Throughout that week and the following one, the news cycle focused almost solely on the end of The Passion Killer and the brave men and women in uniform who brought him down in a masterful operation. The Glock turned up in the bushes, and witnesses attested to hearing three shots, and inside the yellow truck the Gift from God the authorities found countless gadgets of death, crucifixion, and martyrdom, so they did not hesitate to claim self-defense and had no problem justifying leaving the body of the super serial killer with more holes than a colander.

  “It was nearly noon when I finally returned to North Star,” Rose tells me, “and I almost didn’t find anyone there.”

  Ming had stayed back to wait for him, his nerves frayed because the old man had taken so long. “But what happened, Mr. Rose?” Ming came out to greet him fussing and complaining. “I was going nuts, sir. I figured the worst. Where have you been? The police came by; everything is super tense. The owner of the motel started shitting on himself, panicked about harboring so many strange people. He asked us to please return the keys and practically threw us out into the street, not in a bad way, but kicking our asses out anyway.”

  María Paz and Violeta had set off to avoid any more risks, and were waiting in some camp trailers on Lake Champlain, near Tinconderoga, about an hour away.

  “They got out of here just in time,” Ming told Rose. “María Paz and Violeta. Ten more minutes and they would have been fucked. Just as they’re leaving, the cops burst in asking all kinds of questions at the reception desk. Everything is on high alert, Mr. Rose. Pro Bono’s murder has stirred the wasp’s nest and unleashed the state and federal agencies, all chasing The Passion Killer. It seems he had been followed from Brooklyn, and they are convinced that he is here in Vermont.”

  “Makes sense,” Rose said. “But I don’t understand, Ming. How could the girls just leave . . . who are they with?”

  “We’re going to see them in a bit,” Ming said, “I’ll explain everything, but not now, especially not here.”

  “Wait, Ming, I have to apologize for one thing . . .”

  “Later, Mr. Rose,” Ming said, dragging him toward the Toyota.

  “I must tell you at once, I lost your grandfather’s gun.”

  “You lost it? Well, what’re we going to do? It’s not important, Mr. Rose. But let’s go, let’s go!”

  “Can I have some breakfast at least?” Rose protested. “I could use a shower too, but let me grab some breakfast and feed the dogs.”

  “Later,” Ming said. “I’ll take my car, follow me.”

  “Let’s just go in mine,” Rose said. “We’ll come back to get yours later.”

  “Please do what I say, Mr. Rose, follow behind me.”

  The winds, which began to rage as they neared their destination, pushed the Toyota sideways, and Rose had to struggle to keep it on the road. He was so tired. He would have preferred if Ming had driven. After all, Ming knew where they were going and he didn’t. Rose didn’t know where or why, but above all else he was simply exhausted, almost medically in need of rest at home for a week, or a whole month. He couldn’t wait to escape this winter at the end of the world, and observe the season instead from his window next to the crackling fireplace, a nice cup of Earl Grey with a cloud in hand, and his three dogs spread beneath him. He felt truly exhausted, and particularly old. I am already an old man, he thought, as he struggled to keep the car on the road. Now there is nothing else to do but to keep getting older. In the back, dogs slept like rocks, very worn out themselves: in the end, they were the veterans of a tremendous battle. And nobody knew, or was going to know, except themselves and Rose.

  “Damn it, Mr. Rose, you almost didn’t make it. My heart was in my mouth, thinking you were so irresponsible to get lost at the worst time!” María Paz yelled, coming toward him on the shores of Lake Champlain, trying to keep her balance in the gale winds that made her shiver and buckle. “But what a face, Mr. Rose, as if you’ve just come home from a war . . .”

  “Well, sort of. And Violeta?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Conversation was almost impossible. The wind whipped their faces and made the skin on their cheeks flutter, got into their mouths and pilfered their words, and every step forward they tried to take was followed by two steps backward. María Paz was all wrapped up in her hard-shell outfit, ready and dressed for the journey through the realms of ice, everything covered except for her eyes and a few locks of hair, very black, which whipped madly in the wind like a pirate flag.

  “Where’s Violeta?” Rose asked again, screaming this time.

  María Paz was beside him now, clinging to his arm, but such was the violence of the wind bursts that despite their proximity they could only hear each other if they screamed.
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  “It’s the Boreas,” Rose said.

  “Who?”

  “The Boreas, the north wind, blowing like a fucking mini hurricane!”

  “Listen, Mr. Rose, we have to move it along. Violeta is waiting for us just ahead, in a four-by-four,” María Paz screamed. “She’s coming with us! What do you think, Mr. Rose! She said she wanted to come. She decided all on her own, without even me asking. I swear, I didn’t have to press or anything, she alone decided. She didn’t want to return to school. So I brought her with me. I’m taking her!”

  “So you arranged things with the coyote?”

  “What?

  “The coyote! You talked to the coyote?”

  “What coyote, no, I didn’t talk to any coyote, he sent me to hell. Insulted my mom, even called me a bitch. I offered to pay twice the fee, counting on your generosity, of course, Mr. Rose, sorry about that. But no, even then. I begged and begged until he told me to go fuck myself and hung up.”

  “And so?”

  “Elijah is taking us!

  “Who?”

  “Elijah, from the motel . . .”

  “How did that come up?”

  “The man wearing the cap put me in contact, the motel manager. Don’t worry, Mr. Rose, everything is arranged. Good people, this Elijah!”

  “How do you know?”

  “What?”

  “How do you know he’s good people?”

  “You can tell by his face! But hurry, Rose, Elijah says we can’t wait long.”

  “And where do you think you’re going with all this wind?”

  “Elijah says it’ll stop soon.”