by K. Ferrari
How about you suck on a slice of my dick? Pereyra thought. You want to shake the old bastard down but you don’t want no one to get shit on their hands?
But instead, he repeated the words: “Keep it clean, yes, sir, I’m just going to talk to him, let him know what our terms are, nothing else.”
“And his boys? You need to take someone from the crew along with you?” Mr. Machi asked, tacitly accepting Pereyra’s offer to intervene.
Yeah, shithead, like I don’t know what I’m doing, Cesspit thought. Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with? Besides, why do I need to take an army if I’m supposed to go there to play nice like a fucking bitch?
But what he said was: “No, sir, I can handle it on my own. Tonight, if that works for you.”
“Okay, but take it easy, Cesspit, no rough stuff, eh?” Mr. Machi warned him one last time, and lamented: it would be so much easier to just negotiate with his children …
Say what you mean, pussy! You don’t even have the balls to give the order? Pereyra thought as he said, “No need to worry, sir, not a single coarse word.”
So that night he went to Doctor Tango, and after encouraging the goons working the door to get lost in a less than amicable way, and informing the security guard inside, an old acquaintance, that all he needed was a few minutes with the boss to talk things over, he walked into the office.
The last of the goons, standing next to the old guy, pulled out a .38 and aimed it at Pereyra, not menacingly, but as though it were second nature.
That was when Don Rogelio asked him, “What do you want here?”
“What do you want here, sir,” Cesspit corrected him, then turned to the other: “And you, shit-for-brains, put that thing down.”
The goon stood there, imperturbable, imagining the line running straight from his .38 to Pereyra’s chest, waiting for the order that Don Rogelio didn’t give; instead the old man leaned back in his armchair and asked Pereyra again, this time calling him sir, what it was he wanted.
“First thing I want is for you to think of how many times someone’s pointed a gun at you,” Pereyra said. He ran his tongue over his bristly mustache. He relished this kind of situation, even if he was struggling to get through a sentence without his beloved four-letter words.
He continued, “Now I want you to think of how many times you pointed a gun at someone else.”
He paused briefly.
“Then I’d like you to try to imagine how many times that douchebag you got next to you has pointed a gun at somebody or had a gun pointed at him. Same goes for whoever had his job before him.”
A few more seconds to add it all up.
“Finally,” he went on, “I’d like you to think how many times your friends did all that. And then the friends of your friends. And then multiply that by three, Don Rogelio.”
Pereyra’s voice was calm, but there was agitation in his gaze, signs of latent violence not easily restrained, like a volcano on the verge of erupting. The goon’s beating heart was making his .38 shake. All three of them knew it.
“Now, you need to realize that whatever the number is you came up with, it’s way lower than the number of guys ten times harder than that douchebag you got next to you that I go through every day before breakfast,” Pereyra said.
The goon had to grab the .38 with his left hand to keep it still. Pereyra smiled again, stroked his mustache, the beard that grew halfway up his cheeks, and finished:
“And I ate a big breakfast today, Don Rogelio. So my recommendation is to tell that douchebag to put down his gun, because otherwise someone’s going to end up hurt, and it may well be you. As soon as he does, you and I can talk like civilized people.”
Don Rogelio smiled back at Pereyra and reached out his left hand to lower the gun, and his goon sighed with relief, though he would never have admitted it.
“Wait for me outside,” he said.
“Sir?” said the goon, fearing his job was on the line.
“Outside,” Don Rogelio said, and invited Pereyra to sit down.
“You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?” Pereyra asked.
Minutes later, with the smoke of his Parisienne still drifting through the office, Pereyra exited Doctor Tango, taking leave of the bodyguards with a nod of his head, while Don Rogelio lay slung over his desk, a marionette with a snapped neck.
Mr. Machi met with Rogelio’s children a few weeks later. This time, it was much simpler to reach an agreement.
11
NOW, YES.
I’m going to tell you a story, just in case, despite everything, you still don’t recognize me. Maybe it’s the beard. But don’t worry, it’ll come back to you once I get to talking.
It was in ’90 or ’91, I don’t remember anymore. It happened fast, okay, the whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than eight, maybe ten hours. They jerked me out of bed real rough, right in my own home, three blocks from here. Three blocks, think about that …
But back to the story. I was saying these ratfucks nabbed me in my sleep. There were three of them: two Jew bastards and a piece of ass so fine, you’d drag your dick through hot coals just to finger-fuck her shadow. Anyway, they threw me into this rattletrap, and next thing I know, they got me tied to a chair next to Hyena Roldán and this other dude I never saw in my life.
These pissants wouldn’t say a word to us, you believe that? They didn’t talk to us, they didn’t smack us up, they didn’t do nothin’.
I don’t know what the fuck they want, I thought.
What kind of faggot-ass little war do these shitheads think they’re fighting, I thought.
Because one thing was clear: if Roldán and I were tied to a chair, one next to the other, then the Jews and the slut and the rest of them—there were four other dudes there, remember now?—were a bunch of hateful little bitches who must have thought they were mixed up in some kind of war.
But like I say, they didn’t talk to us, they didn’t smack us up, no rough stuff, no nothin’.
We’re not like them, they must have thought. They thought they were better than us! They thought they were better than me, those cocksuckers!
So that’s how it was: they didn’t say nothin’, we didn’t say nothin’. I mean, Roldán and me didn’t say nothin’, the other jerkoff was over there singin’ his ass off like a fuckin’ bird. He offered ’em money, whatever the fuck.
“It’ll never happen again,” the faggot pleaded. “We were just following orders.”
The other assholes there didn’t say a word.
“I’ve got a family,” he cried.
Then finally Hyena says to him, “Shut it, pal, if you can’t hold on to your dignity, at least don’t shit on ours.” And right there the little bitch starts whimpering, real soft. But he did shut his trap, at least.
A while later, the slut comes in with a box full of tubes and gadgets and shit. She plugged a couple of them in. They made this drilling sound.
All right, I thought, now comes the rough stuff.
Christ on a rubber cross, I thought, I’m gonna get whacked by a chick.
But that wasn’t the deal. Instead, one by one, starting with me, the bitch tattooed our faces. That’s right. A tattoo. They also put up posters around the city with some kind of bullshit slogan. They tattooed us though, get it?
Propaganda, they said.
A tip-off, they explained.
Some bullshit about social justice, they said.
These dumb fucks thought we were playing politics, and with that, they thought they had us beat. I gotta say: we used to fuck ’em up bad, those pinkos didn’t know which way was up. We caught ’em flat-flooted and stomped ’em a new asshole. And now they didn’t know what to do or who to go after.
Anyway, the pussies vamoosed out of there and told the cops where to find us. They rolled in a few hours later and there we were, tied to these raggedy-ass chairs in some dump of a house in Berazategui, and each one of us with a pretty little tattoo square in the middle of his face. Go a
head, laugh your ass off.
I had to cool my heels a few days and wait for that shit to scar over so they could operate on me and get rid of it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I thought the bitch did a bad job, but you can’t exactly go walking around the street with the word Torturer stamped on your mug. People are real scum, you know? They gawk at you, they point.
The surgery cost me an arm and a leg, almost two thou American. Lasers and all types of other shit. It hurt, too. Like you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe. Post-op was like having ground glass shoved down your dick hole. I mean that.
So I promised myself I was gonna put at least one of those rotten little fuckers in the dirt. And I looked and looked for them. No luck. I asked every small-time punk I could think of, guys that printed fake IDs and shit like that. Nothing. The fuckers didn’t know word one about politics but they damn sure knew how to cover their ass: there wasn’t a trace of them anywhere.
But I’m a believer, you know. You believe in God, dude? Nah, of course you don’t … Me, though, I’m a believer. God was gonna help me, right? God wasn’t gonna let some pinko shitheads, Jews at that, give me the slip forever.
So the years passed. And now, when I’d nearly forgotten the whole thing, look who I’ve got here. Because you can say what you want, but I recognize you, douchebag. And if I’m wrong, you look enough like that other piece of shit to do the trick just fine.
Torturer, that’s what you wrote on my face, right?
Y’all fucked up one thing big-time: you left me alive. That’s not how you play politics, you little bitch; that’s not how you win a war. That’s not how you do anything. That’s why I tied you to the truck and dragged your ass thirty blocks. That’s why I kicked the shit out of you. So you’d learn.
You don’t care if I smoke, no?
Torturer, look at you …
See this knife? Take a good look, get yourself ready, and say goodbye to your guts.
Get ready, ’cause this is gonna hurt.
It’s gonna hurt like a bitch, I promise you.
PART IV
SUCKLING PIGS
12
THE PHONE RINGS twice more and Mr. Machi doesn’t pick up. Confused and terrified, he asks himself what kind of sick shit Pereyra’s got up his sleeve. If he’s calling, it’s because he knows Mr. Machi knows. He imagines him stroking his beard, smiling behind his thick mustache and cigarette.
Money. It’s got to be money, Mr. Machi thinks, money’s the only thing it can be. But then again, with Pereyra, it could just as well be something else. That unnerves him even further: if it was money, the problem would already be solved. But.
He turns round and round in that neighborhood on the outskirts, searching for a street that looks deserted enough to dump the body. But there’s someone on every corner: a neighbor lady sweeping and whistling a waltz; some kids knocking back the last beer of the night, even though it’s well into the morning; a milkman or delivery boy from the bakery; three or four guys patching up a sidewalk; an old man in a T-shirt on a bench listening to the radio. For Mr. Machi, all this normalcy seems ridiculous and insulting: these simple people shock, even offend him with their routine, gentle, even-keeled movements in this humdrum neighborhood of one-story houses on the fringes of Buenos Aires while he, who would fork over big bucks for that kind of peace, he, who should be at home right now—with all the serenity, security, and comfort of his house in the gated community of El Barrio—is living in the middle of a horror movie.
Why are they all calm and not me? Mr. Machi asks himself. Can these lowlifes pay what I pay to keep myself safe and sound? He shakes his head, hands strangling the wheel as though he suddenly detests the car’s soft interior, the grace of its power steering, its flawless black paint job. It doesn’t surprise him that this kind of thing happens—the corpse, the trunk, the mystery. What surprises Mr. Machi is that it’s happening to him.
It’s suddenly clear that all eyes are on his BMW, even more so than normal.
Mr. Machi again asks himself why, and has to struggle to suppress his retching when he imagines blood pouring out of his trunk. But the motive behind the stares is more mundane, and for Mr. Machi, less perilous: it’s just that, little by little, his right foot’s gotten heavier on the gas, and the BMW, already an anomaly in that area, is cruising over the suburban streets at a velocity far from ordinary in those parts.
I’ve got to get out of here, he thinks. I’ve already made too much of a scene.
He turns onto an avenue heading west. After thirty blocks, he looks at the speedometer, just to keep an eye on it, to keep an eye on himself.
Cruise control, he thinks.
But something else calls his attention to the dash. The odometer is stuck on zero. Someone’s messed with it. The word someone reverberates in his brain until it opens a crack and a doubt slips in.
Could it be that it wasn’t Pereyra who took the BMW and stuck a corpse in the trunk? Mr. Machi wonders, and the thought shakes him, makes him remember the face veiled with blood, the bones and the traces of gunpowder, the rigid body folded in on itself, the stiff limbs in the blue suit.
No, no way, he thinks, I don’t have enemies, I’m a businessman, businessmen have rivals, competitors, employees, associates, but not enemies.
Enemies are guys like Pereyra, he thinks.
He’s the only link between me and anything illegal, he thinks.
Besides, he complains to himself, who the fuck could I have pissed off so bad to make them do a thing like this?
When all’s said and done, I’m a good guy, he thinks.
But the crack’s already there and doubt is threatening to blow his skull wide open.
Pereyra had been with him almost all night at El Imperio. And if he wanted to take Mr. Machi down, he had easier ways of doing it.
Who has access to the car? Mr. Machi asks himself. How many people?
“How many?” Mr. Machi hears himself say aloud. And just those two words, how many, bring him face-to-face with the possibility that more than one person is involved.
No, no, no, he thinks, it can’t be, it’s got to be Pereyra, because …
But something distracts him. Less than fifty meters away, two of Buenos Aires’s finest, pistols in hand, are standing next to a patrol car and motioning for him to pull over.
And for a moment, he struggles for breath.
13
THEIR GOOD-COP, BAD-COP routine is so grotesque, it seems like a put-on. But Mr. Machi’s nerves make him feel like he’s dissolving, like he’s no longer himself, but someone else, someone he doesn’t even know.
The one playing good cop looks a little thinner. But he’s not.
“A person like you,” he says, “has got no reason to be in this part of town.”
“Could be dangerous,” he says.
“We’re here to look out for you,” he says.
The other—shorter, fat, mustachioed—is the archetypical Buenos Aires flatfoot. He doesn’t move the pistol from his hip or his finger from the trigger.
“What you doing around here?” he asks. “You lost or something?”
“Or you out trying to find something?” he asks.
“You got your license and registration?” he asks.
Mr. Machi perspires through the Armani shirt stained with blood beneath his blazer and digs around for his billfold.
“I felt better when I saw you guys,” he says, “I don’t know this area.
“I was looking to buy a pig,” he says.
“I got lost,” he says. “Here are my license and registration,” he says.
Mr. Machi’s pulse is going like a blender. He gives the bad cop the billfold with his license, his registration, the papers for the Glock, and his concealed carry permit. Also the card of a judge he’s friendly with and another from the minister of the interior.
Please assist the bearer of this card, Señor Luis Machi, with all means at your disposal, the card reads. But the bad cop doesn’t look at it. Instead,
he’s eyeing up the papers for the Glock.
“Lookee here,” he says to his partner, “he’s got a gun, too.”
And to Mr. Machi: “Can we see it?”
“Of course,” Mr. Machi says, cowed. Cowed and uncomfortable in a humiliating role he’s far from accustomed to playing. He asks himself when they’ll get around to the part about the bribe; his fear keeps him from making the first move. How much could that fat fuck possibly make? Mr. Machi wonders. Cash, that’ll solve everything.
“Well, a person like yourself has to take certain precautions, there are a lot of delinquents on the loose,” the good cop remarks with a smile straight from a toothpaste ad.
“Exit the vehicle,” the bad cop orders. If his face was in an ad, it would be for antacids. Before and after. The bad cop would be before.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Sánchez,” the good cop says, but the bad one keeps pressing it, even when Mr. Machi is already halfway out of the car:
“Exit the vehicle, please, and let me see your weapon.”
They look at the Glock, weigh it in their hands, admire its workmanship.
“Nice piece,” the good one sighs. “Congratulations.”
“Not like this garbage we’re packing,” Sánchez says, letting the bad-cop role drop a bit while he palms the holster hanging from his belt, smiles for the first time, and winks. “Just think, we’re law enforcement professionals, and we’ll never get our hands on one of these, will we, Sosa?”
“True,” the good cop, aka Sosa, concedes. “Would you believe, sir, we have to pay for our practice rounds out of our own pocket?”
Mr. Machi doesn’t listen to them, he replies on autopilot, lets his years of miscellaneous bribes and kickbacks speak for him while he thinks: I’m calling too much attention to myself here. These two are witnesses, that’s a big risk, I gotta clear out and dump this body somewhere else.
“That’s a damn shame,” he says.
Mr. Machi’s autopilot says it’s a damn shame—that he’d like to do what he can to help out with that regrettable situation, what do people expect if not even the forces of order can make a fair day’s pay—but then Sánchez cuts him off and brings him back to reality.