Perpetual Winter: The Deep Inn (3 page)

             
What am I going to do?
Lucas asked himself.
I’m out on the streets, I’ve done it again. No one’s going to accept me anywhere.
In Brazil and Eastern Europe, there was a style of street fighting that was a type of free-for-all. But, since he was a foreigner, they’d trick him in no time. They were just Mafias. And when he was worth something, they’d get much, much more bet money if he were to lose unexpectedly. Losing would be proposed to him in a very convincing way, of that he was certain. Beyond fighting, what could he do? One possibility would be to open his own gym.
Good idea,
he thought.
That’s it.
He stood up and began circling in his room, like a caged lion. The warehouse on the pier was abandoned, and he could fix it up in a heartbeat in exchange for six months of usage. Afterwards, he’d see. All he had to do was come up with a name that would sell well.

* * *

Someone knocked on the door of his room. It was his mother. Pallid, waxen in the doorway. Behind her, his father appeared and entered, pushing his mother aside.

              “The police are here to take you to Judicial headquarters. What’s going on, Lucas? What happened at the gym?”

              Lucas swallowed hard. “Nothing special. I clobbered a giant who thinks he’s...”

              “Clobbered him how?” his father asked, just centimeters from him. “Clobbered him how?”

              “A few slaps. What’s going on?”

              “Why do the police want to take you in? What happened to the guy you beat up?”

              “Who knows, Dad? He was lying on the ground.”

              “Was he breathing? Was he moving?”

              “Of course, Dad, what do you think?”

              “Decide quickly, boy, because if you’re going to hop out the window, do it now.”

              Lucas peered out the window and, from where he stood, he saw what his father didn’t. A second car had just come up the side street and had parked under the old acacia tree with its lights off. Jumping out the window, he would fall into the arms of the enemy hiding there. It’s better to face the one showing his face. His father then tried to go with him but couldn’t. Lucas had grown up and was on his own.

              Lucas got into the unmarked car and sat in the back seat with two plain clothes cops, one on each side. After driving in silence for a half hour, they stopped at a gray building several stories tall.

              “Walk,” they told him.

              They passed through a small lobby that looked more like a secondary entrance, and probably was one. They took the stairs up two floors. At the third door on the right, near the end of a taciturn hallway and next to the wing holding the cells, they entered a small office where a bald man with tortoiseshell glasses was pecking on a grimy computer keyboard.

              “Sit down,” they ordered him.

              The two policemen remained standing at the door while the third continued writing. On his desk, a small nameplate said “Chief Inspector.” The only window had bars on the inside and translucent glass outside.

             
If I got past the two at the door, it wouldn’t be the old guy who’d come after me,
he thought. He didn’t remember seeing any guards at the entrance. It could be a set up, but why?

              “Name,” inquired the inspector.

              “Quiroga,” Lucas responded instinctively.

              The old man turned in his chair and looked fixedly at him over the top of his glasses.

              “Ah, sorry. Lucas Zuriaga.”

              The inspector remained immobile, traversing him. “Seems like this one’s a clown,” he finally said, expressionlessly. The policemen laughed.

              “Date of birth. Address. Profession.”

              He answered courteously. They brought some ink and took his fingerprints. “Where can I clean my hands?” he asked.

              The old man leaned toward him, took his glasses off, and said, “Forget your hands and explain why a smart guy like you would do something stupid like that.”

              “Quiroga? Does this have something to do with Quiroga?” he asked, not knowing what to do with his wet, tinted blue fingers.

              The old man leaned back and then said to him in an informal, almost warm, tone, “Speak up, kid. This is your chance to find a way out of this.”

              “The guy is a giant; he’s not in my weight class. The coach had me fight him to teach me a lesson. It’s just that he’s disgusting and groped me when we were grappling with each other. I don’t like losing, and I don’t like abuse. That’s why I went after him in the dressing room and slugged him twice without gloves.”

              “And then, kid, how did the rest happen?”

              “I went out the back door and waited for him in the alley, where he parked his bike. When I saw that he had a bat, I belted him a few more times and he fell.”

              “Yes, and then?”

              “I left.”

              “And before you left?”

              “What?” asked Lucas.

              “Before you split, boy,” repeated the inspector.

              “Yes, but what?” insisted Lucas.

              “What? What?” thundered the inspector without warning, spraying Lucas with spittle. He stood up at the same time, facing him. “Are you kidding me? Speak up,” he yelled.

              Lucas said nothing, with his blue hands hanging to dry.

              The two policemen next to the door walked over and told him to put his hands behind his back. They handcuffed him and he was taken back to the car. He noticed that there were now two armed guards at the entrance, each looking at him out of the corner of their eyes. Ten minutes later, they stopped at another much older building. Once there, they took the elevator down at least two floors and got out. It was colder in the building than out on the street, water dripped from some ceilings, and it smelled like medicine. They went down several long dark, empty corridors where the small groups’ steps echoed, amplifying the solitude, until they reached a compartment with a metal door as if it were an industrial elevator. A small red light said
Examination Underway
. They went in.

              He tried not to vomit. Quiroga was completely nude, lying belly up on an examination table with his eyes half open and a trickle of dark blood running out his left ear. He was dead.

Chapter 3

The Examination

The compartment had several empty metal examination tables, which truly made Quiroga’s body the center of attention even if no one had been looking at it, although everyone was.  The floor was zinc-coated and crisscrossed with rare traces of old, poorly cleaned blood. Beside the cadaver was another old man, also bald, who almost smiled and looked at Lucas instead of at Quiroga. For a moment, he thought it was the same one who’d interrogated him at the police station, but no, he was different. He was thinner, taller, and had a flatter face. His teeth were too white and he hid a worthless smile. His sparse hair was reddish, and he wasn’t old.

              “What if he had some disease he didn’t know about?” Lucas managed to articulate.

              “A disease?” pondered the bald, redheaded man. “Hum. Let’s take a look to see if we can find some disease. Come over here,” he said.

              A cross-eyed individual, with slicked-down hair, a slight limp in his left leg, and a short butcher’s smock appeared. He grabbed a circular saw and began to open Quiroga’s chest from the top down. Quiroga’s body shook from the saw, a little blood unsurprisingly dripped out, a strange liquid with small drops of fat encircled the blade. On his hands, you could see his fingers, blue from the fingerprint ink.

              Lucas stepped back, turned around, and tried to run. He got through the door with his hands cuffed behind his back, already off balance, but he didn’t get far. Someone tripped him and he fell. The corridor floor was made of a light cream brick and looked like it hadn’t been washed in at least ten years. It was slippery and Lucas, with his sight still clouded by the greasy liquid that had come out of Quiroga, tried to stand up. The police grabbed him by the coat and belt and led him back to the cadaver that was now cut apart. They had opened him from top to bottom and there were three enormous pieces of meat in a green basin. The old man who wasn’t old had put glasses on and, with latex gloves, grabbed one of them and diagnosed, “The heart is fine.” He grabbed another and said, “The lungs seem healthy,” and then the third, confirming, “The liver shows nothing special at first glance.”

              Lucas gasped, perspiring. His temples pounded. He was going to die there.

              “If it wasn’t because of these, then what would this young man’s boyfriend have died from?” one of the policemen asked in a falsely curious tone.

              The baldheaded guy made a gesture to the cripple, who turned the trunk and head of what remained of Quiroga’s body.

              “Could it be this?” The doctor, using a telescopic metal pointer that looked like an antique car antenna, pointed at a small orifice in the nape of the body’s neck—the entrance wound from a bullet in the head.

              “So, did you have a good nap?”

              He jumped from the hard bed. He’d slept covered in sweat. What a nightmare. But where was he? A man was sitting across from him. It was the inspector who had interrogated him the evening before, this time alone. The clock on the wall showed three-fifteen. Through the window, he could see it was nighttime. He took off Lucas’s handcuffs.

              “Lucas, why did you kill your friend? I just want to understand why?”

              “I didn’t kill him.”

              “But he seemed awfully dead to you, didn’t he, boy? Where did you hide the pistol?”

              “I don’t know.”

              “Now, now, do you want me to believe that you forgot where you put it?”

              “I don’t have a pistol. I didn’t kill him. I slapped him around.”

              “You know, Lucas, I even understand what happened. You knocked him about. Instead of getting the message, he came after you with a bat.” The chief inspector opened his arms slightly and exclaimed, “It was legitimate self-defense on your part.”

              “The guy was bad news, from what they tell me,” he continued. “We didn’t lose much of anything. If it wasn’t you, sooner or later, it would’ve been someone else. Let me tell you this. You did something stupid, but there’s still a way out. Nevertheless, you have to help me so I can help you. Where’s the pistol?”

              “I already told you. There is no pistol. It wasn’t me.”

              “I feel sorry for your mother. She’s desperate. All that money your folks will spend on lawyers is going to leave them completely broke. Son, tell me, why did you kill that lowlife? Tell me that it was in legitimate self-defense, and everything will be fine.”

              “It wasn’t me.” Lucas’s tone changed as if that prison was some sort of ring, although he still didn’t know what a victory would be on this stage.

              The inspector stood up and left without saying another word. Lucas stayed awake for the rest of the night. He barely even closed his eyes. After the inspector left, they’d put handcuffs on him again and his wrists hurt. Someone had taken the clock from the wall. He’d caught a cold and, after two times, when no one came to let him out so he could blow his nose, he quit calling for someone. He coughed lightly to clear his throat. His stuffy nose dripped on the small pillow, and he breathed through his dry mouth. He woke up without having slept. Lucas knew it was exactly seven in the morning that had not yet revealed itself because he unfailingly awoke at that time, and had for many years. After a while, two policemen he didn’t know appeared. They were in uniforms that reminded him of firemen’s utility uniforms—dark clothing with neither shape nor creases, like old pajamas, a dyed kimono, two sizes too large and needing to be ironed. They took his handcuffs off.

              “Wash your nose and comb your hair,” they told him.

There was an old towel next to a lavatory and a small, seemingly used, plastic comb.

              “I don’t have a toothbrush,” Lucas said.

              “Do you want to run to your house to get one?” one of the guards asked. “If we let you go, do you promise to catch the bus back?” the jailer wanted to know, while the other laughed, silently but with insufferable breath.

              Lucas saw the cell half open. The first police, plainclothes, treated him harshly, but he felt they had some respect. Respect when they slyly went up Acacia with their lights out, whispering to him, “We know you’re a man, run, jump out the window, try to disappear into the city”
or when they took him into the station through an unmonitored door, defying him, “Go on, try to get past us, you have a chance to escape” and even respect, by their posture, not only in their relaxed appearance as they leaned against the inspector’s door—the one interrogating him, but in whom Lucas detected a state of alertness, of readiness. Those, in uniform, no. They were at home. He was one prisoner among many. As if he’d never had a life outside. Or they didn’t know about his previous life or were careful that it be buried forever. When they had to work mornings, they guarded prisoners. Lucas was their property.

              Two sharp blows and they fell soundlessly. Gagged, one underneath his bed and the other naked on the mattress. Lucas put on the guard’s uniform, cap crammed on his head, the bill covering his eyes, and advanced down the hall after locking the cell. The guard at the end of the corridor asked him, “Did you see the hard time we gave you last night?”

              He continued walking and said nothing, looking down, pretending to see what time it was on the watch he’d appropriated a few seconds earlier. The guard laughed and continued, “Was it the referee this time, too, oh Lion?”

              The guard was surprised by his colleague’s shoes. “Carlos? Is that you?” It wasn’t Carlos and it was too late for it not to be him. It was Lucas Zuriaga, a direct blow and unconsciousness before the policeman touched the worn floor. This time, he tumbled noisily, ending the quiet with no gentle notice. Two others tried to pull their guns from their holsters. As if they were wax statues in slow motion, their faces disfigured from fear. They fell with two kicks that closed out the sequence. Shooting the pistols, he destroyed the locks on the barred window through which the sixth guard who had come running threw himself, with Lucas’s help.

              There below, the police were moving about, beginning the blockade that awaited his defenestration, but it never occurred because, simultaneously, an alternative solution presented itself; he ran back with a sharp scream that froze the blood of the two men guarding that lair and, with the metal desk that preceded him in the air, he liberated the large barred window from the wall at the end of the corridor. He did defenestrate himself, but before that, he had defenestrated the window itself, ripping it from the concrete. He fell unscathed into the street out back, beginning his flight, far from the blockade.

              And then? Where would he go? His parents, how were they? His plans for the future, how would they survive that noisy confession of a crime he had not committed? Perhaps this wasn’t a victory. It was still early.

              “Wake up, snot face,” one of the firemen disguised as a policemen told him and they pulled him out of his cell with no consideration at all.
“Are you high?”

              “I need to go to the bathroom,” Lucas replied deliberately.

              The policeman pushed a basin with his boot. “Go, but do it quickly.”

              “I don’t need to now.”

              “Ah, you don’t? You’d better want to again because this chamber pot is for the duration. There ain’t nobody’s momma here to help you. Let’s go, but you’d better start moving those feet while you’ve got them.” They handcuffed him again and took him to the worn out, unmarked police car. This was the third trip he’d made without knowing where he was going.

              “Get yourself ready because you’ve got some things to explain to the judge,” one of the agents said.

              Suddenly, the obvious struck him: the coach! The coach had gone to see him, to admonish him for the free-for-all he’d had with Quiroga. The coach knew he’d left him with some deep bruises, but alive.

              “The coach knows I didn’t kill Quiroga. Talk to him, he’ll confirm everything.”

              “We’ll talk to him, tough guy. We’ll talk to him as soon as he turns up. He disappeared. By the way, do you know anyone who’s got something against the coach? Anyone interested in him going from this world to a better place?”

              “After all, who saw me kill Quiroga?”

              “For now, nobody, but it’s still early. For now, we know you’re a violent type despite your babyface. We know you treacherously attacked that athlete in the dressing room. We know your coach went directly to your house to kick you out of the gym, and we know you took a while to show up. After that, the coach never made it home.

              Judge Ponces Branco was totally different from the police. He seemed rich. He wanted to know if the suspect had a lawyer and was told that the defendant hadn’t requested the assistance of counsel. He asked the police about the fresh abrasions on the suspect’s face. They replied that Lucas had slipped and fallen in the morgue during his recognition of the body.

              The prosecutor was devastating. The judge heard the authority’s version of Lucas murdering the victim attentively and his own version listlessly. He asked Lucas why he had so many books about weapons at home and if he had any idea where the coach was. He made a comment about bringing the accused without a lawyer. He also said that he didn’t want suspects falling on their faces any more. He threatened to send the prisoner to the hospital to register the abrasions. He asked Lucas to roll up his sleeves and then gave a quick look of disgust when he saw the handcuff marks on his skin. Finally, he concurred that Lucas was a notoriously dangerous element and that there was a risk of flight and destruction of evidence. He would remain in preventive detention until the case was reviewed, or the coach appeared or he had been designated a lawyer. Given his age and lack of criminal record, he shouldn’t be mixed for the moment with prisoners held for violent crimes. The police then commented that this excluded virtually all of the prisons, but the judge simply repeated that he didn’t want any more falls and brought the session to a close.

              He had just been returned to the judicial prison when they called him. Lucas had visitors. It was his mother. His father didn’t enter because he could only have one five-minute visit. His mother hugged him as if he were a little child and whispered to him that she believed him. No hugging, the guard informed them; it was a question of security. She looked at him for a minute holding his hands and her eyes filled with tears. She told him that she and his father were outside trying to take care of everything. The three of them were a team, with him on the inside of a prison but they were out there fighting for him. He should never strike in anger, no matter what the provocation was, and there would be provocations. He should resist being confined like he resisted the cold at home. She seemed like his father speaking.

              But she also told him that he had to survive inwardly and come out of that world just like he’d entered it, like swans that don’t get wet when they go into the water. How different her hopeful Catholic faith was from his father’s conflictual view of the world... Could it be because to her, life asked for a freshly seasoned meal, while he was obliged to partake in that intrepid combat against fires that no one knew who set, but where it was easy to identify who made money from them?