Blood Lake (26 page)

When it's over, and we're snaking our way through the crush of people, Antonia announces her retirement from blood sports. She gets no argument from me.

As we're crossing the street, the out-of-place sound of a car accelerating catches my ear, people and buses divide and a tan Mercedes splits from the herd, heading right at us. I seize Antonia with a flying tackle and shoulder roll between the stopped cars, legs splaying into the wet gutter. I hear a thump and look up to see Peter lunging headfirst over the hood of the car, face smashing into the windshield and body rolling up onto the roof before falling off into the street.

Four cars and a taxi skid to a halt. Antonia and I rush out into the street as an excited crowd gathers. I kneel down beside Peter. His face is torn and covered with blood, soaking his shirt, but he's conscious. The taxi driver steps out of his car. People are offering useless contradictory advice and I hear myself saying, “Never mind that, just get him to the nearest hospital,” and some of the men standing by help me load Peter into the back of the cab so we can turn around and speed off towards the free hospital. Bullets of sweat are streaming down the taxi driver's neck as he outruns red lights and cuts off vehicles as if they weren't there.

I look at Antonia and find myself counting her arms and legs, her fingers—my God, I'm panting for breath. She looks at me, breathing hard, her eyes wet with tears that won't fall.

A man's hand closes around mine. I look down at the bloody wrists, mashed watch, bloodstains on my clothes. Blood everywhere. I let him hold on to me.

I lean close to Peter's ear and whisper, “You picked a helluva way to get to the hospital.”

“But I wasn't … trying for the morgue,” he answers.

I sit in the gray, featureless hallway. The nauseating smell of rotting organs, filth and urine sticks to me like a chemical weapon in this dreadful heat. I wash my hands in cold water, scrubbing up to my elbows, but I can't change out of my blood-caked clothes.

And I can't seem to stay away from hospitals.

Cousin Lucho Jr. came and took Antonia home, but first I had to watch them clean and bandage several abrasions on my one-and-only daughter's precious skin, leaving me agonizingly aware of what a mistake it was to try to bring her with me and “teach her the ropes” or some such idiocy. When I think that she could have been taken from me, or … When I think that …

This is getting deeper than I ever feared.

We're both going to have a few bruises on our elbows and knees tomorrow. But Christ.

Peter's lucky, they say. No major internal damage. But his fender's pretty banged up and he's certainly not going anywhere for a while. His face is heavily bandaged. He strains, his voice muffled, and manages to tell me that he is still willing to try to get into the morgue.

I tell him I'd rather have him lie still and recover.

“You took one hell of a hit.”

He says he'll be okay.

“I'll come back tomorrow,” I say, patting the cast on his arm. “Call me if you need anything.”

I ask the nurse if there's anywhere I can change out of these gory clothes. I'm willing to ride home wrapped in a towel at this point, if it's clean enough. Since my cousin Lucho
works his second job here, I get a special favor: a cold shower and some mismatched lost-and-founds. I'm so grateful you'd think she's just donated me one of her kidneys.

I step out into the street, grab an uptown bus, fall into a blank-faced trance, and somehow manage to space out, miss my stop, get off, and find myself in the Parque del Centenario. The Independence monument is a dull black shaft pointing at the dark gray sky. Rain is due any minute.

The military are giving a show of strength, parading down the Avenida 9 de Octubre.

I'm dressed like a junkie, carrying a bag of bloodstained clothes, still recovering from shock, and uneasy about being in this crowd, so I wander over to the Parque Victoria where I can sit on a bench, gather my thoughts and watch the iguanas beg for food, just like New York City pigeons.

The man next to me gets up and leaves his paper. I open it, staring, not seeing.

Then I come across a death notice: Ecuador's first woman police officer. Martha Consuela Gallegos was a detective, thirty-three years old, mother of three small children, and was shot in the filthy streets of a slum town just a few miles south of the Colombian border. Thirty-three. I bet we would have liked each other.

Throats clear. I look up from my paper. Two military officers are standing over me.

One of them is a man I should have killed a long time ago.

One must forgive one's enemies—but not before they have been hanged.

—Heinrich Heine

HE'S CAPTAIN PONCE
now, as thin and colorless as ever, with a light straw mustache, sharp cheekbones, and nerves spun from some lightweight tungsten alloy. His tightly drawn face crinkles slightly around his eyes and mouth, the only sign of age.

“May we join you?” asks the other green shadow, whose name is Lieutenant Lasio, according to his polished bars and machine-sewed name tag. Unlike Ponce, he's got a round boyish face with playful eyes, straight dark hair, and a thick black mustache.

“Sure,” I say, folding up the paper, my mind regretfully releasing the fading image of Detective Martha Consuela.

Lasio sits, uses the paper as an icebreaker.

“Lot going on these days, huh?”

“I guess.”

“You following the election campaign?”

“I'm staying away from it,” I say. “How about you?”

“It's bad,” says Captain Ponce, his trademark clipped speech slicing the air like a razor. “Very bad for the country. If that socialist teacher Gatillo wins, all the foreign investors will pull out.”

“And it's not like they're throwing buckets of money at us right now,” says Lieutenant Lasio. “Only way to get rich is to marry an American,
¿no cierto?
”

“We're not all rich.”

“With a dollar worth
six thousand sucres
? Come on!”

“Problem is those
gringa
babes don't speak Spanish,” says Captain Ponce, tearing into each word like a hunting dog on a rabbit's neck.

“Maybe you can help me with my English?” says Lasio. “Let's see—how the heck do they say it? Oh, yeah:
Hell-o. How are you miss señorita
?”

“Fine, thanks. And you?” I say, playing along.

“
Do you like
—uh—
Guayaquil
?”

“Actually, it's getting kind of scary.”

“
What is ‘scary'?
”

I look at them both. “It means I'm afraid.”

“
What is ‘afraid'?
”

“Frightened. Fearful. Do you know the word ‘fear'?”

“No.”

“That's really something,” I tell them in Spanish. “When I get back to the United States I'm going to tell everybody there that the officers in the Ecuadorian Army do not know the meaning of the word ‘fear.'”

That gets some laughs.

“Join us for dinner,” says Captain Ponce.

I look at what I'm wearing.

“I have much nicer clothes at home.”

“I bet you do,” Lieutenant Lasio leers.

“Besides, I'd better be getting back to my family.”

“No, I think you better come with us,” says Captain Ponce.

He eats quickly, his fork darting between his dish and mouth like an agitated lizard, as if at any moment the piercing clarion call of the bugle will be summoning him into battle.

“You're going to drop dead of a heart attack someday,
hermano
,” says Lieutenant Lasio.

“I'm not afraid of death,” says Captain Ponce, barely chewing before he swallows. “Well, I wouldn't want to have my guts ripped out in an alley in this filthy town. But dying high up in the mountains, now that's sweet. It's just like going to sleep. It's delicious.
Delicious
.”

“You go out laughing,” Lieutenant Lasio assures me.

“Bleeding to death, too. It's easy. I took a bullet in the chest near Paquisha in the
oriente
and I didn't feel a thing. Until the doctors started to patch me up.
¡Salonero! ¡Ají!
”

“
Sí, señor
,” says the waiter, rushing over with a dish of hot chili pepper sauce.

“Still, I'd rather come back from battle alive,” I say.

“Of course, but not incapacitated,” says Captain Ponce. “I'd rather die than be incapacitated.”

“Or disappear,” says Lieutenant Lasio.

“Yes,” says Ponce, looking at me. “Many great warriors disappear.”

“Great warriors become legends when they disappear,” says Lasio. “I mean that we'd rather die cleanly than be declared missing in action because your decomposing body is washing up somewhere downriver—”

“We know what you mean, Lieutenant,” says Ponce.

“With no one there to mourn for you or to see you properly buried—”

“All right, Lasio. Now I need to discuss something privately with
señorita
Buscarsela.”

Lieutenant Lasio rises abruptly, smiling at me and asks, “May I see you again?”

“Uh, sure.”

That satisfies him more than it should.

He's gone.

“
¡Salonero! ¡Otra cerveza!
”

“
Sí, señor
.”

“Never fails. Rebels acting up because of the elections,” he says. “Three months ago, north of La Sofía. Near the Colombian border. They took six infantry units by surprise. Had to call in air support. We chased them all the way to the
river, but they got away. Took down a few choppers and tore us up the middle with ground fire and booby traps.”

He lets that sink in.

“That's pretty damn impressive,” he says. “We both know there aren't a half dozen rebel leaders in the whole country with that kind of training, and Juanito was the only one who worked the
sierra
and the
oriente
with equal skill.”

“He trained a lot of people. It could have been anybody.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“What question?”

“Is Juanito alive?”

A spasm jolts a weak spot in my chest, then flutters away unseen.
Damn it
. But I can't help it. Involuntary flashbacks to the interrogation room.

“I would have heard from him.” My voice sounds like cold air flooding a cracked vacuum tube.

“But you're not sure.”

I was sure a week ago. I don't answer.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “They've also been attacking police and military bases in the province of Morona Santiago. Eating away at U.S.-backed efforts to protect the oil supply.”

“I don't think I'm supposed to know that.”

“So you didn't hear it from me. Little closer to his home turf, eh?”

“Hmm.” Why should I believe him?

“They spent three days warning people to stay away from the army base outside of Macas. Everything from spray-painted wall graffiti to laser-printed statements hand delivered by masked courier to Radio Sangay. They're setting up their own Web site, too. Then last week they took out the power, stormed the installation and burned all the files, without killing a single civilian. When it was over, the rebels helped carry wounded soldiers and officers to the hospital, reprimanding them for putting up a fight.”

That
sounds like someone I once knew.

Johnny was always a quick thinker. Irreverent. Shameless. Like the time we were holed up in a bank during
a botched “redistribution” effort and he distracted everyone by setting fire to the money so we could get out alive.

That time.

I shake my head. “Johnny's idea of kindness was to shoot a person in the heart instead of the head and leave them with a good-looking corpse.”

“Can I ask you something?”