The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (15 page)

Sand dusted my toes. I took a deep breath, let it out. I lifted my head, blinked in the sunlight. Pitt sat next to me, legs reclined, resting on an elbow. He twiddled his toes in the sand.

“It isn’t what you think,” he said.

“No,” I said. “It’s worse.”

“I actually like you, you know. I do.”

“So you admit it.”

He lifted a handful of sand, let it trickle through his fingers. “At first it was just business.” He shrugged. “But then I got to know you.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“Believe what you want.” He sat up. “I told him not to do it. Not this way.”

“Why did you go to all this trouble?” I asked. “Why not just blackmail me and be done with it?”

“Would that have worked?”

“Well… No.”

“You see? I told him.” His hands beseeched the heavens for understanding. “Not the kind of person that you are.”

“Quit your ass-kissing and fuck off,” I said.

“I’m not kissing your ass.”

“Whatever.” Another thought. “There must be dozens of people with access to Hak Po’s office. Why does it have to be me?”

Pitt scratched an ear. “I’ve asked myself that too.”

“What? I mean, you don’t know?”

“I do what the boss tells me. It’s not my job to question orders.”

“Well you can tell the boss I’m not going to help you.”

His head dropped to his chest. A wave crashed into shore. He said, “Alright.”

I swallowed. My throat was dry. “Alright, then.”

He touched my shoulder with his open palm. “You’re an alien species to me, you know that?”

“That’s me,” I said. “Little green man from Lima.”

“I’ve never met anyone who was so hard on himself.”

“How am I hard on myself?” I said.

“You see? You don’t even realize. You hold yourself to an impossibly high standard. You hate yourself for a terrible thing that happened to you—”

“Goddammit, don’t you dare—”

“—happened
to
you, that was not your fault!”

I rolled onto my knees, climbed to my feet. I walked toward the ocean, Benjamin Franklin’s face sticking to my plantar warts.

“You need to move on with your life,” he said. His feet slapped behind me. “You hear me?” he shouted.

I broke into a drunken run. He ran after me onto the wet sand. Breakers trickled through my toes. Something sharp bit into the bottom of my foot, a shell perhaps, and I fell to my knees in the thin waves. My hands plowed into the soft sand. The smell of the ocean forced its way into my sinuses, filled my lungs with a purity unknown in Lima.

Pitt dropped to the ground in front of me. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “You were a job for me. I admit it. But you’ve made me rethink what I do and why I do it. You have that affect on people.”

“Really,” I said. You could spread my sarcasm on toast.

“You had that affect on me.” He laughed. “The last dozen dissidents I killed, it took all my self-control to pluck their eyeballs out and chop off their fingers. To let them suffer for days. I didn’t even enjoy raping the women. I wanted to put them out of their misery, but those weren’t the orders.”

“Ambo’s orders.”

“Yes,” he said simply.

The sun was hot on my neck and I felt dizzy. I vomited into the surf. Long choking heaves. I recognized the guacamole, the corn chips, the
ceviche.
The back of my throat burned with stomach acid. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. What effect could I possibly have had on Pitt? I scooped up chunks of my vomit, pressed them together to make a mound in the sand.

Pitt slumped down next to me. He rested his elbows on his knees, stretched out his arms to the sea. “Will you do this for me?”

“Do what?” I mumbled, scooping up more vomit for my sand castle. Or was it a vomit castle?

“This one thing.”

I jerked my head at the house. A wave broke over my hands, dissolved my sculpture. More food for the crabs. I said, “What Ambo wants.”

He ran a sandy finger across his sunburned lower lip. “Never ask you for another favor.”

I hung my head. He was waiting for an answer. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say? My stomach cramped in sour knots. I squinted at the sun.

He lowered his voice. “We can get you a new passport,” he whispered. “Even pay your child support for you.”

My head jerked sideways. “You’d do that for me?”

“Sure,” he said. “What are friends for?”

I nodded drunkenly. “Friends.” Is that what we were? I was no longer sure.

Pitt was talking again. “All we need is this one little favor.” He held out his fist. It was covered in bits of dry sand, and tanned to a deep brown. It seemed different, harder, sharper than it had that morning in the surf.

He said, “Do it for a bro?”

My head hurt. “For a bro.”

“Yes,” he said, fist unwavering. “For a friend.”

I dug my hands deeper into the sand at my sides. In the year since Lili died, he was the only friend I’d made. And a pretty lousy friend, too. I did not like being threatened or bullied. But if he really could get me a new passport, get me off the hook with my ex-wife, I’d be able to travel again… I had to take that chance. Even if it meant being complicit in the murder of an unknown spy. I said, “You ask this of me, it’s the last thing we ever do.”

The fist quivered in the air in front of me. “You don’t mean that.”

I looked at the water as it rushed in to shore, imagined the millions of organisms in a single drop, simple creatures unworried by questions of betrayal, guilt.

I said, “I do.”

“Don’t be like that.”

I shook my head. The fist twitched and fell, limp in the ocean. Pitt looked at the blue sky above us, the departing clouds, the sun burning down on our heads. Back at the house, a thin stream of smoke rose from the patio.

“I need this favor, Horse. Please.”

I lay on the sand as Lynn had done the night before. The waves curled around me, digging me deeper into a sandy grave. I closed my eyes, let the sun burn my white skin.

I said, “So be it.”

Eleven

Fuck it,
I thought, and slammed my way through the front door to Hak Po’s factory.
Either I would win my freedom, as Pitt had promised, or I could look forward to the agony of torture and a slow death at the hands of an enraged Chinese spy.
A win-win.

So why was I so nervous?

The bell jangled against the glass door. There was no one behind the counter. Piles of cast-iron skillets lay stacked around the shop, covered in dust. Hak Po manufactured three sizes of skillet. I picked up a small one, the size to fry an egg with, and hefted it in my hand. If things went wrong, it could serve as a weapon.

Voices from the back. They came closer, talking in Spanish. Hak Po’s accent, thick and juicy. I put the frying pan down, kept my hands behind my back. I fingered the button attached to my right cuff. Tried to look bored.

“Always a pleasure,” boomed a familiar voice, and when Major Villega entered the front of the shop, I knew Pitt had advised me well.

Get there early,
he’d said.
Catch Villega in the act. Get yourself out from under his thumb. Get him under yours. Hah!

“Hak Po!” I bowed my head.

“It is Horse!” The Chinaman shuffled out from behind Villega.

His ear hair had grown since I’d last seen him, inches of curly black luxury, thicker than the hair on his scalp. I had thought him sixty or seventy until Pitt showed me his birth certificate.

Forty-two years old. Too much of the sniff-snort, you know?

Only ten more years and I’d look the same. I could hardly wait.

Hak Po floated across the room in his black slippers. “So please see you!”

“So please see you too,” I said.

He took my hand, squinted at me. “We both please see us.”

I looked over his shoulder at Villega. “I see you’ve met my favorite student.”

An open yellow mouth, a contorted
O.
“You two know each other?”

Villega cleared his throat. “Horse teaches English. Very good teacher.”

Still I held Hak Po’s now-limp hand in mine. “You should take my classes too, Hak. Then you can butcher two languages instead of just one.”

Hak Po looked back at Villega, then at me. “Friends hard find this town. You two good each other, no?”

I slapped Hak Po on his slight shoulders. “We very good each other. No you worry.”

Villega walked to the door. I stepped in front of him, put a palm on his chest. I said, “See you in class tomorrow, old friend?”

I patted his left breast with my right hand, flicked the corner of the manila envelope that protruded from his uniform.

Villega’s face narrowed in a leathery orange crease. A cloud of liquor fumes engulfed me. “Of course. Old friend. Tomorrow. So good to see you.”

“Don’t forget your homework!” I called after him, but the door tinkled, and he was gone.

Hak Po bustled past me, shut and locked the door. He flipped the sign to
Cerrado.
I looked at my watch. Five-thirty.

“You know cop?” he asked.

I shrugged. “He keeps me out of jail.”

“Me too. Nice cop.”

“Yes,” I said. “Very nice cop.”

Hak Po glided back behind the counter and the little-used cash register. I followed. He led me along the back corridor into the factory. The workers had gone home, leaving the great cauldrons of liquid iron, stamping presses to cool in the chill Lima air.

He led me toward his office. The spittle-coated floor would be perfect for losing the button without him realizing, I thought.

This time, though, he walked past his office, continued down the narrow hallway to another door.

“Where’re we going?” I asked.

“Special place I show,” he said, fitting a key in the door. “Where I cook.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You cook?”

He held the door open for me. The smells of half a dozen recipes lingered in the air. Cast-iron skillets full of food cooled on the countertops. Cornbread peeked over the edge of a black skillet. A blackberry crumble overflowed from another. A stack of pancakes towered next to the stove. There were omelettes, fried steaks and sausages, even a skilletful of stir-fried broccoli.

“Gotta tell you, Hak. Don’t know where you put it all.”

Hak Po locked the door. “I like taste. Little bit everything. You hungry?” He fanned his mouth with his fingers, the Latino gesture for “eat.” I looked again at the skillets, the piles of food. Each had a small scoop missing from one side.

“No,” I said, as he picked up a plate. “You bring Villega here, too?”

He frowned, stabbed a sausage with a long fork, nudged it onto a plate with a dirty finger. “He pig. No feed pig.”

Black cabinets lined the walls. The room had no windows, and the only way out was the way we came in. Hak Po had put the keys in his front-left trouser pocket. I adjusted myself in my pants. I could overpower him, take the keys, but if this were a trap, there would be others waiting outside.

“What’s wrong with your office?” I asked.

“Insect trouble.”

“Insects?” My throat felt raw.

“Bugs.” He slapped a scoop of blackberry crumble next to the sausage. “You too skinny. Need eat.”

“No hungry.” I squeezed his elbow. “I didn’t come here to eat, or talk about your cockroach problem.”

“Food first. Business later.”

I yanked the plate away from him. “Business
now.”

He scooped broccoli onto my plate, clattered a fork on top of everything. “You eat. Understand?”

Hak Po had a reputation. Quiet as a mouse, treat you right. Pleasant businessman. Ferocious haggler, but nothing personal. Business is business. Just don’t cross him. I had never seen him angry before. Now his eyes narrowed, his breathing increased in speed. He was not in a good mood.

But then again, neither was I.

I flung the plate on the floor. It shattered. “I don’t want your food, Hak,” I said. “You know what I’m here for, so quit your fucking games!”

Hak Po glared at me for a moment. Then he turned back to the kitchen counter.
Round one to the Horse.
He plucked a meat cleaver from a wooden cutting board, unwound intestines from a nearby pot. He chopped the tripe into thin rings.

“How your friend, Horse?” he asked.

I looked at the tripe on the chopping board, trying to identify the animal. I hoped it was cow.

“What friend? Villega?”

“No. Gringo. One came with before.”

“Pitt?” I snorted. “He’s not my friend. Not anymore.”

“This Pitt,” he said quietly. “Now him I remember. Think long. Hard. Tell me, what he do you no like?”

Alarm bells rang. How much did he know? How much did he suspect? I found refuge in the truth.

“He’s an asshole,” I said. “Let’s put it that way. And what do you care, anyway? You’re a seller. I’m a buyer. We do business. We do good business. What is going on?”

“Why should something be going on?” He raised his voice, as though talking to an unseen audience.

I sighed. “Hak. Dude. You got the coke or not?”

“Oh, coke,” he said loudly. “Sure, I get you coke.” He skated in his slippers across the tile floor, and took a glass bottle from the fridge. He popped the top off, held it out to me.

A Coca-Cola.

I took the bottle. Looked at it. Smelled it. Took a swig. It was soda, nothing more. I held it out at arm’s length and let it drop. It smashed open in a spray of secret formula.

Hak Po shook his head and tsk-tsk’ed. “Terrible insect problem.” The meat cleaver dripped intestinal juices onto the floor, mingled with the soda suds. “Lots of bugs.”

Round two to the Horse.

“Well then.” I put my hand on the doorknob. If he wanted to play games, so could I. “I better go. Let me out of here, will you?”

“Before you go, perhaps you like some sugar in your tea?”

“My tea?”

“I know how much you like your tea.”

“Yes,” I said. “Of…course. My tea.”

Hak Po buried the meat cleaver deep in the grain of the chopping board. He wiped his hands on his apron, reached up to a top shelf. He brought down a large plastic bag. He held it out, presenting it to his unseen viewers. The label declared it to be
ORO DE LAS INCAS AZÚCAR.