Seven Ways to Kill a Cat (2 page)

‘Besides, the kid’s a fucking freak. His
mamá
could have told him to go catch their own cat instead of taking ours. But oh no! Señora Ernestina doesn’t eat cat, the old bitch!’

‘Maybe he doesn’t know how to kill and butcher it.’

‘Well, he can learn,
viejo
, or he can go fuck himself.’

THE BEER’S WARM
. Looks more like milkshake than beer – two parts foam to one part liquid. But I can’t face an argument, so I drink it anyway. Besides, Fat Farías is a stingy bastard. If I make him pull a fresh one with less foam, he’ll want me to shell out and I don’t have a peso.

Chueco comes in poker-faced and pale, swaggers over to my table and shouts, ‘Bottle of rotgut red, Gordo!’

He sits down and stares at me. Eyes wide. Blank. Expressionless. Fat Farías comes over carrying the bottle and a glass in the same hand. Chueco goes on.

‘
Qué onda
, Gringuito?’ He tilts his head and grins like a maniac. He makes like he’s chilled, but it’s forced. It’s all an act.

‘Fine, good …’ I say, giving him the same deranged grin. Let’s see what he says. He’s making me nervous. He blinks, keeping his eyes closed a split second longer than necessary. Chueco does that sometimes. It’s like a card player’s tic, it’s hard to spot but I notice it. I just don’t know what the fuck it means.

Farías plonks the glass down on the table with a bang, tilts the bottle, but before he pours, he barks, ‘That’ll be two pesos!’

‘Chill, Gordo,’ El Chueco says. ‘What’s with you?’ He’s trying to be sarcastic but he botches it. He’s harder than a rock.

‘First things first,’ Fat Farías says.

‘Fuck sake, don’t sweat it, just pour. It’s all cool.’

On the table next to the glass is a fifty-peso note. I don’t know where it came from.

Fat Farías picks it up and fills Chueco’s glass to the brim.

‘Leave the bottle,’ Chueco says, pulling a face, not even looking at him.

Fat Farías picks up on the snub.

‘Fuck you,’ he lets fly. ‘That’s all I need, another little runt trying to make like a gangster. Who did you rip off? Your
mamá
?’

‘Little bit of respect there, Gordo, wouldn’t want things to kick off …’

‘Who’s going to do the kicking? You, you legless little runt?’ Fat Farías chucks the change on the table and stomps back to the bar choking back a laugh with a cough.

‘Yeah, go ahead and laugh,’ Chueco mutters through his teeth. ‘You’ll be crying soon enough.’

He winks at me and knocks back the glass of wine. I’m not going to step into the firing line, so I just give him the same crazed grin he gave me when he showed up.

‘So, what’s been happening, Gringo?’

‘What the fuck is with you? Want to tell me where you got a fifty-peso note?’

‘Don’t sweat it, it’s snide. Relax, I’ll fill you in later.’

I finish my beer. Light a cigarette. Chueco holds up two fingers asking for the cigarette I didn’t offer. I tap the bottom of the pack, shake one out and grudgingly give it to him.

‘That’s better,
compañero
. No need to be tight with the merchandise.’

Chueco fills his glass again and pours some into my beer glass. The wine brings the beer foam from the bottom to the surface.

‘What the fuck you doing?’ I shout.

‘Don’t be such a punk bitch, just drink it,’ he says.

I’m pissed off by his tone, but he’s got a point – this stuff’s not rotgut, it’s fucking rat poison. Doesn’t matter if you mix it with beer or Coke or piss, it’s bitter as carob juice. What’s weird is the bottle’s legit, but I’m guessing it didn’t come with this cat’s piss in it. Explains why Fat Farías always uncorks wine at the bar before bringing it over.

I figure the fat fucker has a stash of cheap wine in his cellar – the shit that comes in twenty-litre barrels – and bottles it behind the bar. Not that I give a fuck if he wants to bottle his own wine. But the day Fat Farías tries to make the spirits go a bit further and gets his hand on the wrong kind of alcohol, he’ll probably fucking kill someone. I’m guessing he knows fuck all about chemistry. Not that I do, but I know the difference between the surgical alcohol you buy at the chemist and the alcohol fuel they sell in barrels down the hardware store. One gets you wasted, the other wastes you. Wouldn’t be the first time someone pulled a stunt like that in the barrio.

I’m thinking all this while I’m sipping my poison, and before I’ve even finished Chueco’s pouring me another. The fucker hasn’t said a word, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to any time soon.

‘Hey,’ I say, ‘that fat fucker’s riding for a fall –’

‘Finish the bottle with me. I’ve got a little business proposition for you.’

The minutes pass and still Chueco says nothing. Every now and then he glances back at the bar. Farías knows he’s doing it, but he obviously thinks he got one over on us because he’s got this big shit-eating grin. And whenever Chueco isn’t looking, he’s pointing and laughing with the other guys at the bar. Chueco’s got his back to them and he’s deep in his own shit, so he doesn’t notice and I’m not about to say anything. I don’t want him kicking off.

‘So, talk or I’m gone.’

Chueco drains his glass, glances round at the bar, then turns and stares out the window at the street. Finally, he leans back in his chair and looks at me.

‘Give us a cigarette before you go then. Probably for the best. You haven’t got the balls for what I’ve got planned.’

‘You calling me chickenshit?’ I say, and the urge to put my fist through his face makes me sound tense, which just makes me more furious because suddenly I realise it’s a set-up. Clever. But I’ve put myself out there now, I can’t back down.

‘I’m not calling anyone anything,’ he says soberly. ‘Just telling it like it is.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight. But right now I’m not sure. I mean, I’d like you as my backup, but if you’re just going to tag along with your tail between your legs don’t bother.’

‘What the fuck do you take me for, Chueco? You looking for a smack in the mouth?’ It’s not a threat, it’s an invitation for him to say something, give me a good reason to smash his face. But he’s a crafty fucker, he knows me too well. He’s got what he wanted. So he just gives a soft laugh and says nothing. I clench my fists and walk out, my heart hammering in my temples.

IN THE SPLIT
second between Fat Farías putting the key in the lock and turning it, and the crowbar hitting the back of his head, which slams against the metal door and pushes it open, a thousand different thoughts burn through my brain. I’m off my face on coke. Chueco’s fifty-peso bill might have been dud, but it was real enough to get us three grams of
merca
, and we’ve already snorted the lot.

I think: what’ll happen if Farías recognises us? Chueco says we’ll be fine, but with him you never know. Not that I’d give a shit if we killed the fat bastard, but then I think about Yanina, Farías’s daughter. Supposedly she’s out dancing down at the local
cumbia
club like every Thursday – that’s why the job has to be tonight – but what if she’s inside watching TV? And even if she’s not, what if this shit goes bad? Farías might be a son of a bitch but he treats that kid like a princess. Yani’s mother died a couple of years ago and I don’t fancy leaving the kid an orphan. I say ‘kid’, but these days Yanina’s got one hell of a body on her. Far as I know, she hasn’t got any other relatives. If anything goes wrong and she’s left to look after the bar on her own, she’ll be eaten alive.

I think: what if someone sees us? I jerk my head round, check no one’s watching before I whack Farías. Chueco’s never had a moral code. Now I don’t either. But in the barrio, there is a code everyone lives by: you don’t shit on your own doorstep. Any shit that goes down in the barrio is generally the work of some dumb fuck who accidentally wandered onto our turf. The code in the barrio makes sense. Least you know when you send your kid down the bakery, your neighbour’s not going to mug him, because if he does he won’t live long enough to brag about it. And it means you’re not going to jump that girl walking down an alley at night because you don’t want someone else fucking your wife or your sister or your daughter.

I can’t see anyone, but you never know. In the darkness, there are thousands of restless eyes. All it takes is one person looking this way and we’re fucked. Well and truly fucked. Because we’d be better off getting beat down by the Feds than having the people round here remind us of the code.

As Farías’s head slams into the metal door, time starts up again. And I stop thinking.

‘Come on, come on, move it …’ Chueco hisses, trying to push Farías’s body inside. When I whacked him, he keeled over in the doorway. I step over the body, grab his shoulders and haul him inside. Chueco closes the door. A dog is barking somewhere and I can barely hear Fat Farías’s hoarse moan. He’s half conscious. Chueco wraps his head in a burlap bag he got from fuck knows where. He always comes prepared. He takes off his belt and lashes Farías’s hands behind his back.

I tiptoe down the corridor. The place is dark, deserted. I come to some sort of living room. The glow from the street lights streams through the half-closed venetian blinds. I turn a light on. A table, three chairs, a television balanced on a plastic beer crate, and everywhere you look, there’s rubbish.

Chueco comes in and starts poking around. There’s nowhere much in here to hide any cash. After couple of minutes, we move on to the kitchen. The place is filthy: dirty dishes, cockroaches, burnt saucepans. There are no doors on the cupboards or the cabinets under the counter. We don’t need to touch them to see what’s inside – just as well since I’m figuring they haven’t been cleaned since Yani’s mother died. And probably not for a couple of years before that. The fridge is empty, maybe broken. Chueco checks it out, then starts opening the pots and jars on the shelves. Pasta, beans,
mate
, sugar …

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I hiss.

‘What’s it look like,
dumbfuck
? Misers always stash their cash in weird places. Don’t you know anything?’

When Chueco starts making like he knows everything, I want to strangle the bastard, but I don’t say anything. Anyway, maybe he’s right. Probably best to check everywhere. I leave him to it and head into the next room. It’s Yanina’s room. I can tell from the photos pinned on the walls and the clothes strewn all over on the floor: a cotton blouse, a bra and a pair of Lycra shorts. I pick up the shorts, stretch them, and picturing her tight arse in them gives me a fucking hard-on. I check the wardrobe, turn the bed over, rummage through the drawers in the bedside table. I know there’s no way Farías’s money is in here, but since Chueco’s being thorough searching the kitchen, I figure it’s a good excuse for me to go through Yanina’s stuff.

Her room is a tip too, but everything in it is impregnated with the smell of her. I like it. In a drawer in the dressing table, among the lipsticks, the make-up and the nail polish, I find a spliff and tuck it behind my ear. There’s a bunch of photos and papers in the other drawers and I’m reading them when Chueco starts shouting and distracts me.

‘What did I tell you?! That
hijo de puta
– come and see this – it’s fucking unbelievable.’ He sounds genuinely surprised. ‘It’s not even like Gordo works in a bank.’

I find him in Fat Farías’s bedroom looking so amazed it’s like he’s dislocated his jaw.

‘It’s just like in the movies, Gringo. I can’t fucking believe it!’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ I hate it when he’s all mysterious, it makes me nervous. ‘Did you find the cash?’

‘Look,’ he says, pointing to the built-in wardrobe, the mesh screen door covered in fly shit.

He rips it open, pushes Fat Farías’s clothes along the rail and suddenly I see what’s got him all worked up. At the back of the wardrobe there’s a safe – one of those old green safes with a little black dial where you put in the combination and all that shit. I glance over at Chueco, and when I see the look of misery on his face, all my tension is released and I burst out laughing.

‘What the fuck you giggling at, you moron? What are we supposed to do now?’

I can’t say anything. I’m holding my sides, laughing so hard I feel like I’m about to dislocate something. As I wipe tears from my face, I hear a metallic twang I recognise. It’s the spring of his flick knife.

‘Only one thing for it, we’ll have to wake up our fat friend and persuade him to give us the combination,’ he says, running his thumb along the blade, and the almost affectionate tone of his voice scares the shit out of me.

‘Hold up, you mad fucker. Look at this thing.’ I rap on the safe with my knuckles. ‘Can’t you see it’s a piece of shit?’

It sounds like a biscuit tin, which surprises even me. The door’s rusted along the bottom, at the top and around the lock itself, which has one of those big handles you get on bank vaults. It’s a Mickey Mouse safe. A toy for gullible misers. The sort of thing a kid would pull apart just to see how it works.

Without a word, I retrace my steps, pick up the crowbar I whacked Farías with and head back into the bedroom. Chueco is pale. He opens his mouth but he doesn’t say anything. I signal for him to stand back. I give the handle a vicious clout and it comes loose from the rust-eaten door. I jiggle it until it comes off, blow into the hole, some flakes of rust flutter out, and I slip my fingers inside. Using a fingernail I release the catch and the safe opens. Simple as. Like I’ve been doing this shit my whole life.

I don’t have time to wonder how I came up with this brainwave because Chueco has already got both hands in the safe and is pulling everything out: old documents, invoices, receipt books, porn mags, mortgage deeds, leaflets from wine merchants and meat suppliers from years back and, lastly, a shoebox tied with string.

‘Bingo …’ Chueco says, cutting the string with his flick knife.

He takes off the lid and banknotes in every colour of the rainbow spill out – blue, brown, green, red, purple … They’ve all got lots of zeros and they all bear the face of El Libertador. We stand there, staring at them like idiots. I remember notes like this, and I’m sure Chueco does. A brown one used to buy you a bag of popcorn, for a blue one you could get a bottle of Coke. If you had a red one, you could have a blowout.
Pesos ley
, they were called back in the late 1970s. They haven’t been in circulation for nearly fifteen years.