Like Flies from Afar

by K. Ferrari

  Just a phone call away: Coco Noriega, Drommo the engineer, a couple of mayors from the outlying towns, some Sushi Boys, Thaelman—who isn’t only the new chief of government, but also the owner of the Garret, the nightclub across from El Imperio—and last but not least, two guys from the Hernández clan—the ones who really held the reins. Every one of them is in his address book.

  But the three persistent pulses from his phone pull him out of his reflections and remind Mr. Machi that he’s alone and that no phone call can get him out of this.

  He cuts the wheel brusquely and exits the interstate. He veers left and follows the curve, passing the beer distributor, and after that the cemetery. He crosses the train tracks and goes a bit farther. Past the soap factory, he turns onto a dirt road. His cell vibrates again, and Mr. Machi wearily takes it from his suit pocket and tosses it into the passenger seat. The phone thuds against the green box with the word Whave spelled out in white. The two objects—chain cutter and phone—conjure the image of the handcuffed cadaver in the trunk. Relentless as winter, the urge returns to know for sure whether the pink fur cuffs are his or not.

  He decides to call Marcos Feldman, who lives in El Barrio, too, just a few houses away from him, and ask him to go have a look. That way, he’ll be able to avoid talking to his wife and facing any uncomfortable questions.

  Mr. Machi upbraids himself for not thinking of this before. I won’t have to explain anything to Marcos, he’ll think it’s just some bullshit I’m caught up in.

  And so he parks on the dirt road and picks up the phone, which just then goes back to vibrating. One, two, three times. On the screen, which is blank, several gray lines quiver with each vibration. Mr. Machi pushes the button that should take him to the menu. Nothing. The screen’s still blank.

  He tries again.

  Nothing.

  One more time.

  Nothing.

  Frantically, he pushes every button, still with the same result.

  Nothing.

  He can’t even shut it down.

  What next? he asks the gods, letting his head drop against the seatback in resignation.

  Did they hack my phone? he asks himself afterward, resignation giving way to fear.

  In response, the phone vibrates. One, two, three times.

  No, no way, he decides then, and shakes his head, dismissing the idea. It must be some problem with my service, he thinks, or else I damaged it when I threw it against the box. Who do I think I’m up against? The KGB? The CIA?

  If he knew what MI6 was, Mr. Machi would have thought of them, too.

  No, he shakes his head again, and a person who hours before thought he had no enemies at all now thinks to himself, I don’t have enemies that powerful.

  The main thing is to figure out what’s the deal with the handcuffs, he repeats to himself. If they’re mine, cutting the chain’s not enough, I need to get them off his wrists. Or burn the body. Why not.

  He shakes his head again, rejecting the idea as excessive. Not that. Fire, no. That’s the last thing he needs. Fire is a terrible idea, even if it is hygienic. It would draw even more attention. He looks at the green box with the white letters and curses.

  Senile old bitch, he says, punching the box and thinking about the hardware store; she sold me this shit and what do I know, maybe I don’t even need a chain cutter. Or maybe what I need is a hacksaw. To cut through the dead guy’s wrist.

  A deep nausea halts this train of thought. The mere idea of it makes him sick, and for the fourth time in minutes, he shakes his head. Mr. Machi imagines blood, bits of flesh and fat and more blood. A shiver like a frightened mouse runs down his spine, and he can feel his nausea wavering between his chest and throat.

  Before I do anything, I need to know if those cuffs are mine, he concludes, restraining the urge to vomit.

  I need to call Marcos.

  Then his cell vibrates, one, two, three times, the screen still blank, and Mr. Machi realizes that without his cell, he’s got no contacts, and without his contacts, he’s left with the only two numbers he knows by heart: El Imperio and his home.

  He puts the BMW in gear and goes looking for a pay phone. His mind traces out a picture of his wife grinning, her glass of whiskey and her cigarette in front of her.

  Mr. Machi swallows his hatred without savoring it, the way you swallow medicine.

  22

  HE FINDS A service station across from a call shop and parks his BMW alongside the first pump.

  “Fill her up, I’ll be right back,” he says to the kid in the red uniform who comes over to attend to him.

  “You want us to squeegee the windows?” the kid in the red uniform asks.

  “Did I say anything about the windows?” Mr. Machi replies, and commands him, without waiting for an answer, “Fill her up and don’t touch anything, I’ll be right back.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” The kid in the red uniform says in a tone Mr. Machi has heard many times, and which he once more mistakes for respect when it’s barely even contempt. Then he crosses the street.

  “Use booth two,” the fat chick behind the counter tells him.

  Mr. Machi enters the booth with the numeral 2 scrawled on the poorly washed glass, dials his home number, and hears his wife’s voice.

  “Hello.”

  “Mirta, it’s me,” Mr. Machi says. “I need you to go—”

  “Sure, sure … you got a lot of balls, I’ll tell you that,” she says, raising her voice and following up with a laugh. “Might I be permitted to know where my husband is at present?”

  “In a call shop in La Reja, close to Moreno, where Coco Noriega’s place is, remember? Near Old Man Heredia’s gym,” Mr. Machi says, and another disturbing idea, or rather, the embryo of a disturbing idea, begins to gestate in his mind.

  Noriega, he thinks, Heredia. He thinks of one guy shot in the face, of another guy shot in the face. He thinks of a letter. Of the muffled voice of Old Man Heredia saying this time he’d done it, he’d never forgive him for this. But there’s no time for that now. His wife didn’t expect an answer, and the shock of getting one leaves her speechless. He knows if he lets her react, she’ll ask him what he’s doing there, so he takes advantage of the brief silence.

  “Now, please, listen to me: I need you to go to my desk and look and see if the fur handcuffs, the pink ones, are in the drawer,” Mr. Machi says before his wife has the chance to respond.

  “Are you crazy, Luis? How can you ask me to do that? Isn’t it enough that…?” And for the first time, his wife’s tone of voice isn’t feigned, for the first time in three calls that day, the indignation and surprise are real. “Who are you planning on fucking now that you need me to look for them?”

  There is a silence. Neither of them fills it with words. Then the woman sobs.

  “How far are you going to push me, Luis, how far?”

  “Mirta,” Mr. Machi says.

  “I’m going, Luis, I’m going to my parents’ place in Santa Fe, and this time—”

  “I know, I know, Mirta: this time, it’s forever,” Mr. Machi finishes her sentence, exasperated.

  Then he says, doing everything he can to keep himself from screaming, to cut the bullshit, they both know she’s not going anywhere, and if she does, she’ll be back in three or four days, and this time it doesn’t have anything to do with a girl; she needs to stop thinking about that bimbo from Paraguay and listen up. He’s in a bind, a big one, and he needs her to go to the desk and …

  She’s sobbing again. The sorrow wells up inside her and spills over and it somehow brings a serenity neither whiskey nor tranquilizers could ever give her. She feels sad, but in a romantic way. She is humiliated, and in her humiliation realizes she still retains a bit of self-respect. She talks again. This time, her voice is calm.

  “No, Luis, no,” she says.

  “If you want to say goodbye, you’d best be here in fifteen minutes,” she says.

  “After that I’m leaving,” she says. “Forever.�
��

  “Your breakfast will be in the kitchen,” she says.

  “Don’t try and find us, you sack of shit, not me and not Alan either,” she says.

  And she hangs up.

  Fuck, Mr. Machi thinks. And hangs up in turn. If he knew who Kurt Gödel was, he’d think of the incompleteness theorems.

  The best thing, he decides, is to buy a hacksaw. A fine-tooth hacksaw.

  PART VII

  WILD DOGS

  23

  THEY FOUND BULLDOG’S BODY in a house in the William C. Morris neighborhood nine days after his death.

  The crack of the shotgun didn’t make them call the police. No one in William Morris calls the cops for a thing like that. The smell, either: a little stench, a rat or two, none of that’s going to faze anyone. In William C., as the residents like to call it, no one calls the cops for anything, truth be told.

  But after a week, there was no questioning the fetor emerging from the house, and by the ninth day, the comings and goings of the vermin had gotten to be too much, even for the residents of William C. So someone kicked in the wooden door and then, yes, the cops had to be called.

  The shotgun, sawed off to make the job easier, was lying there next to the body. The dirt floor had soaked up most of the blood, leaving an enormous dark blotch that resembled a map of Brazil.

  Thanks in part to the rats, but mostly to the sawed-off shotgun with its sixteen-gauge shells, Bulldog’s face had disappeared in a crater of blood, brains, and splintered bones. Still there to identify him were the tattoo on his right shoulder and the scars on his back, mementos from the beatings his father had dealt him in his boyhood, back when they still called him Little Hugo.

  On the table lay a note. The people who saw it say that it was spattered with remnants of Bulldog’s face.

  I hope you forgive me Mr. Eredia, it supposedly said. I no I faled you but that guy punched like a mule.

  Plus I lost my legs, it supposedly went on.

  I no I shudn’t have gone with those hookers at Mr. Machi’s the other nite but you no how it goes, the note said, supposedly.

  And supposedly he finished by saying, You told me strait out an opportunity like this one u just get once in your life. So Im done.

  I hope you forgive me, Mr. Eredia, he repeated.

  24

  HE RESTED HIS ELBOW on the mat and shook his head. A cold, metallic sweat rolled down from the nape of his neck. More than anything, he saw lights: red lights, yellow, and a few extremely fine rays of bluish green. He looked around, trying to find something to focus on, and his eyes played games with him, doubling and smudging everything.

  Nothing.

  The faces in disarray and the cameras faded menacingly, a brunette in white seemed to have four tits, one bald head split into two.

  Lights, lights, shouting, lights.

  Finally, with some effort, he managed to make out an arm swinging toward him, and a face.

  And the numbers: three, four, five.

  He stopped, trying to look composed, and almost managed to do so, despite his glassy eyes, his wayward gaze.

  Six, seven.

  Then he started, bit by bit—first one foot, then the other—to dance back and forth, trying to remember what round it was.

  Eight.

  The little bald man in the sky-blue shirt stopped the standing eight count, and as he grabbed the fighter’s hands in their twelve-ounce Corti gloves, he asked if he could keep going.

  Martínez bit his mouth guard, nodded his head yes, and remembered: round five.

  He rode it out as best he could and tried to stay off the ropes, keeping to the center of the ring. He even got in a few good ones before the bell sent him back to his corner.

  “Don’t sweat it, kid. If we don’t give up, we can beat this guy,” his corner man said to encourage him. A giant man with thick gray hair, yellow teeth, and a nose that spoke of a lifetime of liver shots and KOs.

  Heredia—that was his name—smeared Vaseline on his right eyebrow and continued: “Box him, fend him off with the left, and when you hit him, hit him good.”

  “We’re gonna box him,” he continued, reverting to the first-person plural. “That’s what we’re best at, and that’s where this guy is weak.”

  When he was done with the Vaseline, he put the mouth guard back in and repeated, “We’re gonna box him.” But while he spoke to the fighter, he scanned the ringside seats for a face.

  Martínez nodded without looking at Heredia, promising himself that when the fight was over he’d break his dick off in that brunette holding the signboard with the number six over her head. Those whores from Don Luis’s place the night before had left him itching for more.

  Bell.

  The sixth round was quick and easy, much like the first four—like they should be, Heredia thought from his corner—with Martínez getting in the best shots and Santos, the kid from Tucumán, trying in vain to come after him.

  Maybe it was just a scare, Heredia thought.

  Calmer now, almost as if the knockdown had been a bad joke, he greeted Martínez with a smile, sponging down his face. Heredia told him to keep going like that, fend the kid off with the left and don’t punch unless you’re sure you’ll hit the mark.

  “Like that, we can beat him on points,” Heredia said, and rinsed his face again, thinking less about the remaining rounds than the next bout, their odds for the title, his first champion pupil.

  The brunette came out with a poster reading seven, and when she passed Martínez, she winked and gave him a smile that could make your dick turn to granite. Her dress had a long slit that showed off her left leg, and its generous neckline gave a generous view of her more than generous cleavage. She was a little too made up, and she had a ravenous look about her, hungry for a chance that would probably never come.

  At first, the seventh went just like the round before: Martínez stuck to the center of the ring and held Santos, the kid from Tucumán, at bay for two and a half minutes.

  Until he slipped up.

  Then Santos saw an opening and threw a murderous series of combos: hooks, jabs, crosses. Heredia got nervous and started to sweat.

  This is a dirty business, he told himself, as if he’d only just found out, as if he’d only gotten into pro fighting the day before. I told Machi to bring me a tomato can, just a few more fights and we’d be up for the title, instead he gives me this brute—he interrupted himself to shout at Martínez to get out of there, to throw the left—this brute with lead fists, and either nobody told this kid it wasn’t his time yet, or else they did tell him and he got here and saw the lights and the packed stands, the TV cameras and the trim, and decided, “To hell with it, I’m gonna play Rocky.”

  Bell.

  “Take it easy, don’t go out there like it’s kill or be killed, that’s just playing his game. We’re gonna go out there and box and we’ll take him on points,” Heredia repeated.

  “Be careful, dammit,” he growled.

  The brunette came out with a big eight on her signboard, and Martínez didn’t even look at her.

  Both fighters reached the center of the ring certain this would be the last round: Santos was losing on points and had taken the lion’s share of the punches, but Bulldog couldn’t hold out for three more rounds like the last one. Heredia knew it too: all he needed was to see the two of them stop, to watch them shake their heads on their way out, how they faced off in the center of the ring.

  Machi, you cocksucking son of a bitch, he thought. I’ll never forgive you for this, he thought.

  Hugo Martínez, whom everyone called Bulldog, attacked, giving it everything he had: his soul, his fists, his will, his hunger. The little man with the bald head gave him a warning for a low blow, then another for a headbutt.

  It was funny, it seemed like all of a sudden the two men had started to hate each other—they’d never seen each other before, and they’d never see each other again—even if that hatred would dissipate as soon as the fight had ended. It w
asn’t a sport anymore, it was contempt in its purest form.

  And there they were, trading blows as ferocious as they were devoid of technique, when a thud sounded out, brutal, definitive, and—as the cameras showed over and over, from different angles and at different speeds—there was the body falling in defeat.

  The little man in the sky-blue shirt could have counted to a hundred, two hundred, a thousand. Even ten thousand.

  Nearly fifteen minutes passed until the fallen man, now back in his dressing room, would return to consciousness, in the arms of his coach, and know.

  In the meantime, in the dressing room of the winner, the other coach was cackling with a bottle of beer, dripping sweat, in the middle of a group of friends. Listening to a voice on the phone that was putting together the next bout.

  “Yeah, I want Morales … I told you he couldn’t lose … In a month, give or take … Yeah, Coco, listen to me, work things out with Loco Wilkinson … Right, right, I’ll call you Wednesday,” Mr. Machi said—his pockets bulging with gambling money—just as Santos, the kid from Tucumán, grabbed the brunette’s head in the shower, her dress soaking wet and pulled up over her waist, and finished in her mouth.

  PART VIII

  INCLUDED IN THE PRESENT CLASSIFICATION

  25

  AT A MINI-MART run by a Chinese family, Mr. Machi finds the hacksaw he needs. He also buys a bag of charcoal, a small bottle of lighter fluid, and a large bottle of Coke. He thinks this makes him look like a regular customer—despite the suit jacket buttoned to the top, the smell of vomit, the splatters of mud—and therefore less memorable.