Blood Lake (29 page)

I ask Lieutenant Lasio to let me out a few blocks from Ruben's hotel.

He pulls over, bars the door with his arm and says that he won't let me out unless I answer his proposition with one of the standard synonyms for “yes.” I tell him I didn't bring my thesaurus with me.

“I happen to know that you're married and that your wife lives in Quito,” I say, pulling away.

“She understands.” Lieutenant Lasio laughs. Now there's an original line. “Tell me something,” he says.

“About what?”

“The enlisted men all grumble about Captain Ponce 'cause he's such a hard-ass. How come you get along with him?”

“I once pulled a thorn out of his paw.”

“Hmm. I think I've done that a few times myself,” he says with a bright, toothy smile.

I take a cautious roundabout route to the hotel, which is not easy, since it's dark and the collected rainwater is flowing three feet out from the clogged gutters into the middle of the street. But I'm really anxious to talk to Ruben and find out what he's learned.

We're getting close.

I can almost touch it.

A cantankerous-sounding truck with a creaky flatbed turns the corner and lurches along the street in my direction. I keep walking, keeping a wary eye on the truck. The way it slows and rattles to the curb just ahead of me has a dreamlike I-knew-this-was-coming quality to it, helped along by the sticky gobs of streetlight dancing on the rippling water and the close, still heat of the night.

The driver stops the truck, and his partner climbs out and starts walking calmly over towards me. He is fat enough for me to outrun him if I have to. He swaggers up to me as if he's going to ask me the time but instead he says, “What are you doing here? Got a name? Got a
cédula
?”

“Sure, now I've got a question: Who the hell are you?” I answer.

By now the driver is standing on my other side, triangulating me between two unfriendly bodies and a cement retaining wall with the rushing river behind it.

“Show her,” says the driver.

The first guy pulls a plastic ID card out of his pocket and holds it up for me to see. It's his picture all right, on a card that identifies him as a member of the National Police. And?

“We're police,
señorita
,” says the driver.

“All right, I'm getting out my
cédula
,” I say, slowly reaching into my pocket for my national identity card. It's still “Good Until Death.”

They look at it. I haven't lived at the address on the card for nineteen years.

“Where do you live?” asks the driver.

“In the
barrio
Centro Cívico.”

“Then what are you doing here?” asks the partner, as if there were some crime in being found outside my neighborhood.

“I thought the curfew was repealed.”

“And if we wanted to search you, see if you're carrying any drugs?
¿Acaso un pito?
Some marijuana?”

Oh, terrific. One uncorroborated report and I get ten years in the local hellhole.

On paper, Ecuador's law books protect me against this kind of warrantless search and seizure. But there are no law books on this street corner. The law begins and ends with the cops who are standing in front of me right now, guns in their belts, blocking my way. And I don't have any reason to believe that they're on duty, either. Or if they're really cops at all.

So I turn out my pockets and stand there with the empty fabric dangling from my hands and nothing but lint on my fingers.

“Where's your passport?” asks the driver in a flash of flat-footed inspiration.

“I don't need to carry it around with me when I've got a valid
cédula
,” I explain.

“You have to carry your passport with you at all times.”

“Oh.” That clause must have been amended to the immigration laws late this afternoon, because I was legal this morning.

“We're going to have to take you in for questioning,” says the driver. They open the way for me. The path between them leads straight to the open door of the truck.

I glance at their belts.

I could probably shoot my way out of this.

If I had a gun.

They put me between them—leaving my hands and feet free so I can claw their tender places and kick my way through the windshield if I have to—and, somewhat to my relief, take me on a bumpy ride straight to the nearest police station.

“No passport, eh?” says a sworn member of that dreaded gang, Hell's Bureaucrats, astride the leather throne behind his desk, chain-smoking Full Speeds, the cheapest and smelliest brand on the market. Filterless. “You'll have to pay a fifty-dollar fine.”

“
Fifty dollars
? I haven't got that with me.”

“You haven't got fifty dollars with you?”

“If I did, your boys would have found it.”

They let that one pass.

“Then you must fill out the alternate form, which authorizes payment in sucres, at today's exchange rate, which is—” He flips languidly through a thumb-smeared copy of
El Mundo
. “—Six thousand seven hundred and seventy. So that makes—” He works it out on a calculator. Twice. “—Three hundred and thirty-eight thousand five hundred sucres.”

“I don't have that on me, either,” I say.

“You don't? Are you sure?”

“Who the hell walks around Guayaquil at night with that kind of money in their pockets?”

The pricks behind me whisper comments about the kind of women who do, then the fat-assed cop who collared me says something about how Buscarsela sounds a lot like
buscona
.

It means whore.

They laugh about it.

Yeah, I haven't heard that one since eighth grade.

At least this is playing out as farce instead of tragedy. Maybe a routine shakedown after all, to fulfill their quota. Completely arbitrary.

“Then you will also have to fill out this promissory note,”
says the Devil's auditor, and he shoves both documents across the desk towards me.

“Got a pen?” I say.

The bureaucrat shoves a pen at me. I start to walk away.

“Hold it!” says the bureaucrat. “Two hundred and forty sucres.”

“What?”

“The charge for those forms is two hundred and forty sucres.”

I take a close look at the forms and see that they are both embossed with the municipal seal and cost a hundred twenty sucres each. So I dig into my cash and hand the bureaucrat the grungiest bills I can find. And the bills around here can get pretty grungy.

But my luck is still holding. He could have told me that the official forms are only available from city hall starting at 8:00
A.M.
Monday morning.

I sit in a wobbly plastic chair and fill out the forms, then hand them back to the bureaucrat, who seizes them with his cloven hooves.

“Profession?” he blurts out, one more unfilled space staring up at him from the standardized form.

Stormer of gates? Chaser of dreams? Tireless enemy of evil? Working mother?

All of the above.

“Private investigator.”

He groans slightly while lifting a massive binder, and starts flipping through sheet after sheet of computer printout.

“That's not in the profession book,” he announces forbiddingly.

He slides the fateful tome around and shows it to me. Apparently there's no feminine entry for
investigator
. Guess I'll have to change professions.

Or change genders.

I'm leaning close when he blows the smoke in my face so it goes straight down inside me and scorches my tender air sacs in half a hundred places with lye-tipped needles.

“Just put down homemaker,” I say, coughing viciously. This farce is wearing thin.

“
Cédula
,” he says.

I produce my
cédula
again.

“Voting card.”

“I'm not allowed to vote. I'm not a citizen.”

“
Cédula tributaria
.”

Jesus, somebody should teach these guys how to use
verbs
.

“I don't file taxes. I don't live here. I'm not a citizen.”

The bureaucrat compares the data on one form with the data on the other form, then when everything seems to be just about ready and in order, he clips them together.

“
Una foto
.” Oh, God, no.

“I don't carry photos of myself around with me—”

“I can't process the papers without a photo,” he says, tossing them aside and turning his back on me so he can start shuffling through a pile of papers like he's got a thousand other things to do. I don't believe this.

On second thought, I do.

It's nearly midnight.

“Where can I get a photo taken at this hour?”

Ah, it just so happens that the bureaucrat has a Polaroid in the back. The fee? Only ten dollars.

I don't have it, but he'll take my watch.

I'm looking forward to a few minutes under Ruben's shower and washing the stale
eau de police station
off me in a steady stream of warm water.

I rap lightly on his door.

I would have called ahead but someone ripped the receiver off the pay phone at the police station.

I give another rap, pass a few seconds watching the wallpaper age, then try the knob. It turns and opens in.

Blood-flecked pages of notes are being scattered by the breeze and blowing out the open window like the last fading fragments of a shredded human life.

He's slumped at his desk, facedown in a soggy mass of clotted newspaper clippings, black blood and newsprint all smeared together.

There are also three gaping exit wounds in his back that speak of a skilled assassin firing in rapid succession from about five feet away.

It wasn't the throat cutter.

I touch his neck. Cold enough.

The blood's still wet in spots. Couldn't be more than an hour old, which means this happened while I was being held up by the police. If that's a coincidence, then I'm Queen Elizabeth's long-lost love child, Princess Filomena of Corona.

Do I just get out now before the cops show up? Or should I call the bastards? They're probably watching me. I'd better call.

It takes five tries to get a dial tone. I tell them when and where.

I don't have much time.

I go around the room gathering up Ruben's notes. I have to pick the loose, blood-spattered sheets out of the potted plants, from under the couch, even pull them off the iron grillework on the balcony. They make quite a bundle. I can see a few sheets drifting along El Malecón and into the Río Guayas where they float out to sea.

I leave the sodden newspaper articles where they are, under Ruben's body.

I'm sweating.

I look around, trying to memorize everything. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of a struggle.

Three closely spaced shots. Small, maybe .22 caliber. This killer knew what he was doing.

Yeah, I said “he.” There are traces of some mighty big footprints on the rug in front of the desk. I stand and try to gauge the approximate angle of the wounds.

Then I notice something. Ruben is not wearing his watch. I check his pockets, under the desk, in the drawers. I shuffle through the remaining newspaper articles still piled neatly
on his desk, and there is his watch, under a few undisturbed clips, wrapped in newspaper.

I unfold it.

It's a crime article from
El Despacho
. Byline: Javier Putamayo.

Our man.

It's hard to think straight right now, but I try. Ruben was expecting me. He was going to show me this article, but he hid it instead, which means he had some time to think before he died. So the killer was probably someone he knew, not the ham-handed North Guayas boys, who wouldn't have given him the chance to leave me this, and whatever it means, I'm not leaving it for the cops. I could use a new watch, too.

I grab the rest of the articles, put them together with the note pages.