Blood of Paradise (28 page)

Malvasio turned uphill again, another narrow, snaking road. Near the top, a smaller church named El Niño de Atoche stood in a grove of
amate
trees with their ghostly white bark. Malvasio spotted the tip of Sleeper's cigarette glowing on the vestibule steps. On seeing the van, the boy flipped his butt into the street, the red ash arcing like a rocket through the darkness.

Sleeper was bare-chested, his long-sleeved shirt knotted around his waist, the better to show off his ink. His chest was adorned with prayer hands and rosary beads, a
pachuco
cross. On his back, two long-haired women in clown face appeared, one happy, one sad—the traditional Smile Now, Cry Later. Variations on MS and the number thirteen sleeved up and down his arms, while the back of each hand bore the inscription “C/S” for
Con safos:
untouchable.

Climbing into the van's passenger seat, Sleeper said, “The fuck you been, Duende?”

His English came softly inflected with an incongruous drawl, the result of six years spent in rural Virginia. He'd landed there at age twelve with his mother, who'd fled Soyapongo and her abusive drunk of a husband to seek a better future for herself and her son in the Shenandoah Valley, a growing haven for Salvadoran émigrés. Things didn't turn out as she'd hoped. Armando, as she knew him, was a bored and restless sort, lousy at school, prone to fights, and he fell in with a Salvatrucho
clica
. He got banged in at fourteen and, in accordance with the irony of gang handles, was rechristened Sleeper because he was constantly wired. By age eighteen he was honing his flair with a blade by logging sixty-hour weeks at a poultry processing plant carving up chickens, then working on his entrepreneurial skills by driving down to the Carolinas each weekend to score meth for sale back in the valley. He and his pals were out-hustling the biker outfits who'd once dominated the local trade, and crank was taking the rural backwaters by storm. Not that the Salvatruchos were the only ones testing the darker edges of American ambition: Some of their biggest buyers were the hayseed managers at the poultry plant, who offered free rails to anyone willing to work a second shift. Then, six months ago, a multi-agency sweep came down: The homegrown managers lawyered up and pointed the finger at their immigrant suppliers, who got rounded up by the DEA, deported by the ICE. Shortly thereafter, Malvasio came upon Sleeper trying to hustle up a connection at a bar here in San Bartolo Oriente, and saw possibilities.

As for “Duende,” it was the name Malvasio used with his hirelings. It referred locally to a kind of spirit, not unlike a faerie or leprechaun, who could be charming or devious or even malevolent depending on his mood. Behind his back, he'd learned, they sometimes called him Dundo instead: Stupid. Such were the indignities suffered by middle-management everywhere.

In defense of his tardiness, Malvasio said, “A situation came up.”

“Yeah, well, a situation almost came up here. I was ready to book my ass on down the road.”

Malvasio didn't respond. He was looking past Sleeper at the thin, dark, rawboned youth emerging from the shadows of the church steps.

“Who's Buster?”

Sleeper did a little sheepish dance with one hand while the other stuffed his Marlboros into the back pocket of his sagging jeans. “Thought a posse of two with your particular business in mind just wouldn't cut it, know what I'm saying?”

The youth lingered on the sidewalk. He was somewhere between thirteen and sixteen, with dull, fathomless eyes. He wore a Raiders jersey and baggy Dickies, both counterfeit no doubt, a black bandana wrapped tight around his head, a machete tucked into his belt.

“He old enough to have a name?”

“Chucho.”

Malvasio nodded. It came from
chuco chucho
, Nahuatl for “dirty dog.”

“Open the door. Tell him to get in.”

Sleeper reached behind his seat and undid the lock on the van's sliding door, gesturing for Chucho to climb aboard. Before sitting down, the boy turned the machete so the blade rested upward and wouldn't damage the seat vinyl. The perfect passenger, Malvasio thought.

“Put your shirt on,” he told Sleeper, putting the van in gear again and pulling away from the curb. “Just give people one more thing to ID you by.”

Sleeper unknotted the sleeves around his waist and pulled his shirt on. Buttoning the cuffs, he said, “You don't look so hot, Duende. Like you could use a rail, get you through this thing.” He reached into his front pant pocket and removed a short straw and a bindle of crank wrapped in tinfoil. Methamphetamine had made its way down here, along with Ecstasy. They were the latest drugs of choice, pushed by the Mexican cartels, sometimes used as payment if the
mareros
helped move product—which Sleeper, given his pedigree, was more than happy to do. “Chucho and me could use a bump our own selves.”

He laid out a line for Malvasio in his palm. Malvasio braked, slipped the tranny in neutral, and leaned over, then took the straw and horned the line of yellowish chalky powder off Sleeper's skin. It flooded his nostril with an odor like gun metal wrapped in dirty sock and soured the phlegm trickling down the back of his throat. As the first little kick quivered through his neck muscles, he thought: forty-five years old, look at you. Sleeper tapped two dots of powder into his palm, took the straw from Malvasio, and passed it to Chucho, holding out his hand. The boy leaned forward and hoovered his bump, fussed with his nostrils. Sleeper knocked back his own recharge as Malvasio put the van in gear again and headed downhill.

“I thought about you today, Duende, know that?” Sleeper grinned like he knew a fabulous secret. “Heard on the news about this cat in Afghanistan—you know the one I'm talking about? This guy pretending to be some kind of freelance special forces hotshot. Says he was a Green Beret down here in the eighties, no lie. The local angle. Any event, he's over there now, hoping to cash in on the twenty-five-fucking-million-dollar bounty on Osama bin Laden's head. He's taking guys prisoner, says the U.S. government knows all about him, they love what he's doing, on and on and on like this till he gets arrested by the
afghanilistas
for torturing guys in this house he's, like, renting? Got 'em tied to the toilet or hanging upside down from the ceiling and shit. And the guys he's capturing, he says they're al Qaeda and Taliban, but the cops or whoever look into it, and his prisoners, they're just, you know, guys. Meanwhile, the real special forces, State Department, who-the-fuck-ever—they can't scrape this guy off their shoes fast enough, man. They say he's crackers, totally messed up and shit, so—”

Malvasio cut him short. Crank talk. “And why, exactly, did this remind you of me?”

Sleeper's eyes narrowed to slivers. The grin lingered. “He's like you, man. Doing
el mero mero
's bidding. But if you're ever caught—you hear what I'm saying? They'll back off you like a fucking leper. Call you nuts. Do it so fast, make your head spin. Then they'll let you hang.”

They drove slowly without headlights down a side street lined with dark market stalls two blocks from the cathedral, the beginning of the
barrio bajo
. Sleeper leaned forward in his seat, peering through the windshield at the dark doorways of the decrepit shops and shabby walk-ups lining the sidewalk. Behind him, Chucho hunched forward, one hand on the handle of the sliding door, the other on his machete, ready to bolt into the street when Sleeper gave the word.

They were searching for a small-time dealer named Ziro who understood imperfectly the proprieties of hustling in San Bartolo Oriente. Anyone with a dose of smarts knew that Hector Torres,
el mero mero
, got paid for such privileges. His reputation as the godfather of the local death squads instilled the required level of fear, but he was also a businessman, and he'd come around to the perfectly reasonable position that it made better sense to extort the
mareros
than to slaughter them. The point was maintaining a certain level of order, not eliminating vice, especially when there was money to be made. And so the
mareros
were permitted their minor scams—hand-to-hand drug sales, stickups, muscling street vendors and small businesses—but they kicked back to Hector for protection, which kept the mayhem reasonably in check. Those who didn't play along suffered—that was where Malvasio came in.

The work reminded him of his Chicago days, not in the good sense but in the gone-to-hell sense. Not that he regretted what he and Ray and Phil had done, jackrolling fools—they'd deserved worse, and he'd pocketed a tidy bonus from the Gangster Disciples for harassing the competition. It was the grim sense of déjà vu that weighed on him, as though he were trapped in a bad dream—pulling the same tricks as ten years ago but for shabbier reasons in an even drearier place, and having to soil his hands with hopeless little deviants like this Ziro creature who'd not only skipped on his taxes three collections running but was bragging about it now. Finding him, getting his account in balance, teaching him some manners—that was the new bit of business Hector had brought up the night before in the bar at El Arriero, when all Malvasio had wanted was sleep.

If Ziro didn't listen to reason, it would be up to Los Soldados de San Miguel to take it from there. Malvasio would try to get that through to him: This little visit from me is the good news. Don't be
dundo
.

The air smelled of rotting garbage and urine, a carryover from the street markets in the baking sun earlier that day. Here and there, faces emerged from the shadows—scowling boys, fat tattooed men with lacquered hair wearing shapeless
guayaberas
, the occasional prostitute squeezed into a spandex top and miniskirt. Then just as quickly the faces pulled back into the swallowing darkness again.

Malvasio said, “You're sure he's out tonight?”

“You never hand up your spot, Duende. Never.”

They crossed a steep narrow alleyway cluttered with lumber, leading back toward the main plaza. Sleeper held out his hand, signaling Malvasio to stop.

Rolling down the passenger-side window, Sleeper pursed his lips and let go with a soft lilting whistle. At the same time, with his hand hidden, he gestured for Chucho to get ready. Almost imperceptibly, a figure edged back farther into the shadows.

Sleeper whispered to Chucho:
“¡Ahorita!”

The kid slid open the van's side door and darted into the alley. Ziro, running for his life, scattered two-by-fours behind him, but Chucho hurtled past or fought through them, possessed. Malvasio gunned the motor and, a hundred feet ahead, turned sharp, racing down a brick-paved side street, then turning back again at the next corner just as Chucho flushed Ziro from the mouth of the alley. The two boys raced downhill half a block toward the cathedral square, then Chucho tripped Ziro up and tackled him. Malvasio sped to the spot, braked hard. He and Sleeper jumped out to join in as Chucho pulled the machete from his belt with a spinning flourish and pressed the blade to the other boy's throat.

Faces stared from black doorways. Ziro—scrawny and small, boxers high, pants low, no shirt or shoes—lay on his back in the street, chest heaving, his breath a soft, wheezy shriek from the sheer force of the air pumping in and out of his lungs. Sleeper strolled up grandly, leaned down, put his hands on his knees and cocked his head, peering into Ziro's bloated eyes.

“Hola, chero. Tienes el culo a dos manos ¿verdad?”
Hey, buddy. Scared shitless, am I right?

He and Malvasio each took an arm and hefted Ziro to his feet as Chucho kept the machete blade pressed to the boy's neck. They trundled him into the van, forcing him to lie on the floor where Sleeper tied his hands behind his back with hemp cord and stuffed a filthy rag deep into his mouth. As quick as that, they were on their way, out of town.

They drove to a deserted spot along the dry riverbed of the Río Conacastal, where the proceedings would be shielded from view by a copse of spindly fernlike
carago
trees. The three of them dragged Ziro out and stripped off his pants, then pulled his pockets inside out, collecting his bottles—the boy was dealing crack mixed with crumbled Alka-Seltzer, drywall for the cluckheads—and the measly fifty dollars he had on him, a fraction of his nut. Then, as he knelt in the brittle, black
carago
pods, Sleeper went to work, whipping him with a car antenna he liked to use, finishing up with a few good blows to the head, the gut, the kidneys, using a fish billy he'd brought along as well. Chucho, a mere spectator now, sat to the side on a rock, bored, twirling the handle of his machete between his hands. One of Ziro's eyes had swollen closed and a deep gash along his brow oozed blood down his face. He hung his head, choking back tears.

Malvasio gave the signal and Sleeper pulled the rag from Ziro's mouth. The boy gasped and spat out the noxious taste and caught his breath, then looked straight up into Malvasio's eyes. He said, “I know a boy you want. He see. He see the woman get take.”

The kid had the gall to bargain. “What woman?”

“¿Qué mujer?”
Sleeper translating, just to be sure.

Ziro licked his lips. The dried blood clotting there glistened.
“La mujer del pozo.”

The woman from the well.

The
caserio
sat among low hills, the five tiny houses made of
bahareque
, a mix of cane stalks and wood sticks glued together with mud. As the van pulled up, climbing the last of the rutted path from the nearest road, Malvasio spotted a small figure darting into the forest. Sleeper saw it too. He and Chucho jumped from the van and gave chase, thrashing through the underbrush beneath the dark tree cover.

Ziro, barely able to sit upright or even see much given the damage to his eye, remained behind with Malvasio, still bound but not gagged. Minutes passed. Sleeper and Chucho reappeared finally, alone, drenched in sweat, cursing and swatting at buzzing mosquitoes as they trudged back to the van.