The Second Bat Guano War Part 31

I said, "I have to go see if his body is there."

"They won't let you."

"Who?"

"You'll see." She raised her voice, claws extended, and screeched at the gorgeous blue sky. "f.u.c.king animals!"

"Hang on," I said. "How do you even know Sven's dead? If you haven't seen his body, I mean."

"I stood here and watched," she said. "Everyone's down on the beach. The police insisted. Sven didn't pa.s.s by."

"So how can you be sure?"

"I saw... I saw, I saw..." She hyperventilated, and I slapped her again. She sat back on the stairs. She took a deep breath. "I saw his shoes. Sticking out. From under the blanket. Handmade shoes. I made for him. A gift. For this trip."

We sat there a long moment. The cold mountain wind blew through us. I put my hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," I said at last.

"Everybody's f.u.c.king sorry," she said. Shook her shoulder free. "That doesn't bring my Sven back."

I stood. Nodded. I'd been there. There was nothing I could say or do to help her. I left her sitting on the gravel-packed staircase, screaming Swedish curses at the empty heavens. I ran the next few stairs, eager to get away from her. She made me uneasy. I couldn't quite put my finger on why. But my progress was soon reduced to a slow, painful slog, pushing my protesting knees beyond their natural limit, the sound of her voice nagging at me like my overactive conscience.

I panted up the steep incline. At each step I pa.s.sed fond memories, recollections I did not deserve, did not want to remember. Times of happiness and joy. The hotel where Kate and I once stayed. The restaurant where we ate breakfast, the view of the lake prominent from the garden terrace. The bush where we had made love, despite the thorns. The stretch of gra.s.s where we had lain, Liliana on my stomach, until she p.o.o.ped and it trickled from her diaper onto my shirt.

The stairs evened out. I pushed myself forward along the now gentle incline. The haze of smoke in the sky grew nearer. I rounded a bend between two houses and there it stood: the charred remains of the Hotel Finski: "Fun" Finski owner and sole proprietor, best backpacker hostel and bar on the island, and home to the only chef in Bolivia who knew how to prepare an authentic Malaysian satay.

The stench of burnt flesh filled the air. A crowd of soldiers loitered near the blackened sh.e.l.l of the building, smoking cigarettes. Empty buckets lay on the gra.s.s. A grunt with a machete hacked at low-level shrubs near a neighboring building. The remaining embers of the fire hissed and smoked.

Scattered about on the gra.s.s lay a dozen blankets covering body-length lumps. I started to run, my oxygen-starved muscles complaining, my lungs hungry for air. I fell to the ground next to the nearest corpse. Lifted the blanket. The skeletal face of an old woman grinned at me, bits of flesh attached to the jaw. Gray threads of silken hair twisted from the scalp. I slipped on the wet gra.s.s and pitched onto the body, the blanket slipping, the smell of burnt meat and hair enveloping me.

A shout behind me grew into a chorus. I humped the corpse, trying to get up, but fell again. The soldiers dragged me to my feet and held me tight.

"Looking for a friend," I said in Spanish.

A soldier in army fatigues with two chevrons on his sleeve swaggered over. A cigarette stuck to his lower lip. He looked me up and down. A rifle hung from his shoulder.

He said, "What kind of friend?"

"A friend. I told you. I think he might be here." I nodded at the bodies.

"The kind of friend who bombs hotels? Suicide bomber, maybe?"

"Hijo de puta," I swore. "I saw the fire on the island. My friend was staying here. Let me find the body."

A soldier fished through my pockets, looking for my ID.

"Pasaporte," the corporal said crisply.

"No tengo."

"No pa.s.sport?" He plucked the cigarette from his lips, blew smoke in my face and grinned, gold teeth glittering in the early morning light. "Then you are an illegal immigrant to Bolivia."

"I crossed the lake this morning. In a boat." I pleaded with the platoon of thin conscripts. "I just got here." I gestured to the corpses on the ground. "I saw the explosion. I was so worried, I must have left my pa.s.sport at the hotel."

"And where is your hotel?"

"In Puno," I lied. "In Peru."

The corporal sucked on the stub of his cigarette, dropped it to the ground. The cinder flickered in the cold breeze. Smoke trickled upward toward my nose, died.

"My brother went to your country. He was an illegal. They put him in jail. They raped him in the a.s.s. Your black people. Then they deported him. Now he has AIDS." He spat. "Why should we not do the same to you?"

I clenched my b.u.t.tocks, wondering how to avoid an unwanted party in my pants.

"I have committed a grave crime against the Republic of Bolivia," I said. "While there is nothing I can do to make this right, perhaps as the smallest token of my sorrow, you will accept the two hundred US dollars in my left front trouser pocket as an on-the-spot fine."

The soldier holding my arms relaxed his grip, but did not let go. The corporal pushed his pockmarked face close to mine, the tobacco stench masking the reek of death surrounding us. I thought about asking him for a cigarette, but decided against it.

"You try to bribe me, gringo? In my country, bribery is illegal."

I avoided his eyes. "In mine too, corporal. I would never think of something so base as to offer a bribe to an upright, outstanding exemplar of Bolivian machismo such as yourself." I angled my head toward the sky off my left shoulder, spoke to the soldiers behind me. "I mean no offense to the great people of Bolivia. I merely wish to ascertain if my friend be alive or dead. If what little I have can atone for my breaking of your sacred law, then I hope such a pitiful sum be sufficient that you forgive my atrocity."

The man behind me snickered. "He talks funny."

The corporal held my gaze. Then he clapped me on the shoulder and laughed. "We don't want your money, gringo." He jerked his chin at the man behind me. "Let him go."

I took a deep breath and rubbed my wrists. "Thank you, sir," I said, looking around at the blankets stretched out on the ground, wondering which, if any, of the lumps was Pitt. "If I can just-"

The corporal blocked my path again. He grinned. "Private Gonzalez here needs to see a dentist." The private in question smiled broadly, offering his black teeth into evidence. "The army does not pay privates much money. Perhaps you could help him out?"

"Of course," I said. I took the money from my pocket. It was all I had left from raiding the hostel's cash box. While crossing the lake in the boat, I had transferred my stash from its hiding place to my pocket, thinking I might need some money when I got to the island. I hadn't realized I would need it so soon. "How much does that cost?"

The corporal took the money from my hand. "I think forty dollars ought to be about right, don't you?"

I nodded vehemently, my chin banging against my collarbone. "That seems fair."

His boots crunched on burnt gra.s.s as he indicated another conscript. "Huevito here is nineteen years old and has five kids. They all need shoes. Ten dollars a pair, no?"

Private Huevo and I nodded enthusiastically at each other.

"Absolutely," I said.

"Ten dollars each for these other gentlemen, who have been of such great a.s.sistance to your grace this day," -the money was duly handed out- "and a little something for my wife back in La Paz."

He handed me a five-dollar bill. "Your contrition has been noted and accepted. You have twenty-four hours to leave the country."

The men grinned at me. I cleared my throat. I said, "Permit me to inspect the bodies?"

The corporal scowled. "Make it quick."

One by one I peeled back the blankets, the fabric sticking to charred faces. In addition to the old woman, I saw the skinless skulls of two blond-haired guys, neither of them Pitt, a Bolivian child, five broad-shouldered Argentinians wearing rugby jerseys, and two overweight white women in their fifties.

Only one body was left.

I knelt, took hold of the edge of the blanket. I held my face to the sky, felt the sun warm on my cheek. I breathed in deep, held it, fighting the nausea, and yanked back the wool covering.

A blackened, eyeless face stared up at me. Clumps of blond hair clung to the top of the skull. Burned deep into the flesh below the neck, a shark-tooth necklace.

NINETEEN.

The gravel crunched underfoot. I dropped myself from one step to another, not paying attention to where I was going, so long as it was down.

Now what?

Pitt was dead. I had my soccer-mom closure. Motherf.u.c.king bulls.h.i.t. Nothing was closed. Only a million unanswered questions that no longer mattered. I came all this way to find you, Pitt, and you had to go and die on me before I could hear it from your lips. Maybe then I might have believed in this touchy-feely ashram bulls.h.i.t.

But Pitt was dead and his secret along with him. Ambo had tricked him into showing up-You want to talk? Sure, let's talk!-and killed him. Plus a bunch of other innocent people. I wondered what excuse he'd give the press. Bolivian Terrorists Attack Tourist Watering Hole? Some bulls.h.i.t. Did Bolivia even have terrorists? Whatever. In a week or two it would all be forgotten.

What was Pitt's secret? It made me crazy. What did he want me to know? Or maybe this was it: death heals all wounds. There was no peace on earth and never would be. But I hoped that whatever was left of him, his consciousness-his soul, if he had one-had reached a cease-fire with existence.

But my war was just beginning. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Horse. f.u.c.k Gaia. I owed Pitt a debt. A life for a life. For a brief moment in time I had believed that redemption was possible. Taunting me with that momentary glimpse of Eden... I imagined my hands around Ambo's throat, squeezing the air out of him. Watching him suffer. Watching him die.

Gentlemen of the jury, the facts are simple: Ambo ordered the execution of his own son, Pitt. Had his own wife murdered. Of course he did. Why would Pitt kill his own mother? Ambo framed me for that crime.

What's more, Ambo let me out of jail to help find Pitt. And they'd found him, although without my aid. What were Ambo's plans for me now? The only logical answer: he would kill me. Or try to.

But what about Kate? I could go to her. Woo her. Try to build a life again.

Right...now who was kidding who? She'd said goodbye. I was pretty sure she meant it.

What if she didn't? What if there was a chance? She still had some feelings for me, that was clear. Or why had she seduced me on the beach?

I was unsure of myself, for the first time in a long while. Even if I could persuade her to leave Victor and come back to me-by no means a likely outcome-she was a reminder of my sin. Our shared sin. I couldn't look at her without seeing our dead child's face. I didn't deserve to be happy. But if she had found peace, maybe she could teach me how. Maybe we could build on that. Make some kind of life together.

We could run. Go to Brazil. Learn some Portuguese. I frowned. But too much happiness was possible in Brazil. The beach? Not for me. Sun, sand and threesomes with the golden girls of Rio? Not my style. To be so close to happiness might give me a heart attack.

More to the point, if Ambo was trying to kill me, it didn't matter where we went. He would find us. He would kill us both. I didn't care too much what happened to me. But I didn't want anything to happen to Kate.

No. It was time to go back to Lima. Confront Ambo. Demand the truth. Then kill him. Kill or be killed. The law of the jungle. The law of Lima. It had come to that. I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. I entered my verdict: the defendant is guilty on all charges, Your Honor.

First step was the ashram. Victor and Echo and the rest. If I could catch them before they left. They were my logical allies. Play along with their plan to stop the war-as if that was going to make any difference. I would need their help to get back down to Lima. I flexed my fingers. They itched. I got a hard-on just thinking about Ambo's throat. No v.i.a.g.r.a necessary.

I squeezed the air in front of me, wishing his neck was between my hands. I could almost smell his dying breath. I was so absorbed in this daydream I nearly stepped on her. My blonde bundle of joy. She looked at me, as though expecting a greeting. Her eyes were red but the tears had stopped. She'd braided her hair, two long cords of yellow down each side.

She asked, "You find your friend?"

I grunted. Stepped around her. Clomped my way down the stairs.

A timid voice said to my back, "I ask, you find your friend?"

"The f.u.c.k you care," I said, not bothering to stop.

I heard her stand up. "Where you going?"

"Get off this island."

"They won't let you."

"Got a boat," I called over my shoulder.

"Can I come?" she asked.

I didn't turn. "No."

Booted feet danced on the gravel beside me. "I'm serious," she said. "Take me with you."

"So am I."

She panted for breath, trying to keep up. "My name's Aurora. I'm coming whether you want me to or not."

I turned to confront her. She crunched to a halt on the stair above me. I said, "f.u.c.k off already, will you?"

She slapped me across the face. Hit hard for a girl. Her thumb grazed my broken nose. I saw white. Ground my teeth together, clenched my fists. Opened my eyes. She stared at me, her face wide with fear. But she did not flinch. Did not back down. I tensed my arm to strike.

She said, "You're not the only one who's lost someone. Remember?"

She held up her open palms to block my blow. Maybe she was right. d.a.m.n, she was right. There was plenty of grief to go around. I lowered my fists.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But you can't come with. What I've got to do is dangerous."

"And what's that?"

I lifted my shoulders, let them drop. "Find the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who did this. Make them hurt. Kill them if I can."

She pulled at her braids. Blood seeped from the roots. "You mean you know who did this?"

"a.s.sa.s.sins for the CIA," I said. "Call themselves the Dissent Suppression Unit." I nodded up the hill. "They did it to keep my friend from talking." I added, "They're probably out there somewhere, waiting for me. To kill me. Which is why you can't come along."

She grabbed my arm. "I'm not asking."

"If you come, the Americans will kill you too," I said. "I've got enough dead people on my conscience already. I don't need any more."