The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (17 page)

“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.

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 polic
í
a.
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 knew 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.