Authors: Jack Hillgate
‘Describe it to me’, I said, my pen hovering over my notepad.
Juan Andres sat on a metal chair, watching Kieran closely.
‘This is good’, he said, 'very good.'
‘Which one is it?’
‘Well hey there, English, let me try ‘em all first, why dontcha?’
‘Give him the juggling balls’, said Juan Andres suddenly. ‘To test coordination. Pupil dilation.’
‘Good idea.’
I went back outside and brought them in. I noticed that their black cloth covers had been bleached by the sun.
‘You timing this?’
‘Si.
’
To anyone entering the garage at that point we would have looked an odd bunch. Two of us, sweating, taking notes, looking for pupil dilation and signs of enhanced neuron activity in the third, our subject, who was sitting on a stool, juggling calmly and humming a song I couldn’t recognise.
‘Still buzzing?’
‘Yup.’
Thirty minutes had passed.
‘I nearly broke my own record.’
‘How many?’
‘Seven hundred fifty, seven hundred fifty one, fifty two, fifty three…’
Kieran was counting the revolutions of the three black balls. It was hypnotic.
‘How do you feel Kieran?’, I asked ten minutes later.
‘Wearin’ off now’, he said. ‘Can feel it.’
‘Marks out of ten?’
‘It was pretty good, for a small line. Maybe a seven?’
‘Care to guess which one it was?’
‘Nope. Not til I tried ‘em all.’
He took the second line and we repeated the process. His pupils were heavily dilated now, the counting had ceased and he was humming a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, ‘Under the Bridge’. We stopped speaking to him and continued to observe. The dilation was marked now, he had started to sweat, although it was hot and airless inside, but the interesting thing was the twitch just under his right eye each time a ball moved past it.
‘How long?’
‘Forty minutes.’
‘Kieran?’
He didn’t answer. He kept the balls in the air, humming the same refrain over and over, the twitch becoming less pronounced.
‘Kieran?’
‘Yup?’
‘How goes it?’
‘Still up there. Good shit, man. This yours?’
Neither Juan Andres nor I said anything. I made another note in my log. Suddenly Kieran stopped juggling and placed the balls on the table.
‘Can I get a glass of water or somethin’?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Mouth’s bit cottony.’
‘Describe the taste?’
‘Umm…like, medicine, bad medicine.’
Juan Andres handed him the water and he drained the glass in one gulp.
‘Unpleasant?’
‘Uh…a little, I guess. But good shit man. This yours?’
We didn’t say anything.
‘Ready for number three?’
‘Yup. Comin’ down.’
‘You want to take a walk outside, fresh air?’
‘Nope. Let’s do it.’
Juan Andres nodded and I handed Kieran another clean rolled up dollar bill. He snorted the third line and we realized instantly that something was wrong.
‘Kieran?’
He slid to the floor, gasping for breath.
‘Kieran?’
‘
Mira! El color!
’
Kieran was turning grey and was covered in a thick sheen of sweat.
‘KIERAN!!!!’
No answer.
We knelt down and I let Juan Andres examine him. Kieran's pupils were completely dilated and his throat was making a gurgling sound. White spit oozed from his nose and his mouth. He was trying to speak, to say something.
‘What’s happening?’
‘He is in shock.’
Juan Andres checked his pulse and his heartbeat, holding his head close to Kieran’s chest.
‘
Mierda
.’
‘Shit. What do we do?’
‘I go get mama.’
Juan Andres raced out of the garage leaving me with the sputtering Kieran, propped up like a motorized doll whose batteries were nearly dead.
‘Kieran’, I whispered into his ear. ‘Can you hear me?’
He nodded very slowly and closed his eyes.
‘FUCK! JUAN ANDRES!!!!’, I screamed, as Mrs Garcia barged into the garage with Juan Andres holding something that looked like a primitive defibrillator.
‘You're shitting me!’
‘Leave it to mama!
Venga mama!
’
Mrs Garcia didn’t need to be told what to do. She hitched up her long dress and squatted next to Kieran.
‘
Tienes
.’
She passed the plug to Juan Andres and he fitted it into a spare socket in the wall. Mrs Garcia pulled Kieran by the legs so he was lying flat on the concrete and rubber floor. She looked at me and motioned for me to move out of the way. When I heard the hum of the pads I scooted quickly over to Juan Andres. I looked at the little vial of powder that we had taken nearly a week to produce. I looked back at Mrs Garcia, hunched over Kieran, just in time to see his body jolt once, then twice and then a third time.
He should have been drying out in a clinic somewhere in the Swiss Alps, he should have been breathing fresh mountain air, but here he was with Juan Andres, Mrs Garcia and me in a garage in the middle of Colombia with his mouth oozing cocaine and two hundred and fifty volts passing through the left side of his chest.
There was nothing else I could do, so I closed my eyes and prayed.
14
April 2007 – Cannes, South of France
The chocolate-brown suede banquettes were complemented by a pristine white linen tablecloth and cream napkins. The carpet was a matching shade of brown, lustrous and thick, just like Stephanie’s hair.
‘Tell me about chemistry’, I said, sipping from my glass of champagne and popping one of the
amuses bouches
into my mouth.
‘My family…they like me to do ballet, or singing.’
‘You can sing?’
‘I am told I can sing.’
‘You refused to be smothered by the pink blanket.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I mean you did not want to be a stereotype. Science. What made you start?’
‘You are scientist?’
‘I’ve worked in technology.’
‘I was thirteen. French school is very tough. We learn by rote, we must fit into the system.’
‘Stultifying, I imagine.’
‘I learned science, I liked the natural sciences. I was the only girl in my baccalaureate with science.
Lycee
Fenelon
, in Grasse. A good school.’
‘Grasse is the perfume village?’
‘Yes, but is not very fragrant. Factories and lots of circulation. Traffic.’
‘Factories?’
‘Yes. I worked at one.’
‘After your studies?’
‘Yes. I went University of Nice, four years. Then no-one give me job so I get job working in perfume factory.’
‘And then it’s just a short step to working at a shop that sells perfume?’
‘Yes.’
She took an
amuse-bouche
and held it to her lips.
‘Is better at Sephora. Is better money, good social contributions.’
‘Don’t think me rude, Stephanie, but what do they pay you?’
‘Is not sounding much, I know. I have one thousand eight hundred euro after the tax.’
‘Really?’
I took a long sip of champagne. I thought of the young man sitting at Jack Wiseman’s desk. He had been there just for show, but Stephanie wouldn’t be. She leaned back and took the
amuse-bouche
in her mouth. Her lips were very full and I could feel my erection under the table.
‘Would you consider a different type of work, Stephanie?’
‘Perhaps. But I have job for life. They cannot fire me.’
‘Working in a cosmetics store? When you have a science degree? Isn’t it an awful waste?’
‘I don’t want
chomage
.’
‘Unemployment?’
She nodded and swallowed.
‘Have you decided?’ she asked me.
‘Have I decided what?’
She pointed to her large black menu which didn’t have the prices on it.
‘What you will eat?’
An oriental waiter appeared by our table, electronic pad in hand and my erection subsided.
‘
Cinq minutes
’, I said to him. ‘But bring another bottle of champagne.’
He bowed and walked smoothly back towards the sommelier.
‘You always take this long to decide?’ she said, crossing her legs and squeezing her toned brown calves together.
‘I don’t want to make a mistake’, I replied.
‘There is no right or wrong. You choose, is all good here.’
‘Yes’, I said softly, gazing unblinkingly at her.
‘I don’t think I’ve got anything to lose.’
***
November 1990
They took
Franz or Heinz
from the apartment block to the central jail in Cali.
Franz or Heinz
did not speak Spanish, but, if he had done, he would have listened carefully whilst a list of charges was read out to him and he was asked if he had a lawyer.
‘
Abogado
?’ said a diminutive guard, dressed in the regulation green.
‘Frankel.’
‘
No tiene abogado?
’
‘My name is Frankel. You will contact the German embassy, please.’
The guard ticked ‘no’ in the box on the form that identified whether the individual charged had a lawyer – an
abogado
. Another guard pushed
Franz or Heinz
towards a small doorway with the butt of his rifle.
‘
Vamos!!!
’
Franz or Heinz
took one look through the doorway. Through it he could see a room tiled in turquoise and a nurse sitting patiently, staring at him. He decided for whatever reason that he didn’t like the look of where he was being guided, he panicked and then clumsily tried to grab the rifle. It was his second big mistake of the day because the weight of the butt when applied with great force against his jaw – which it then was, by another diminutive green-clad guard – had the dual effect of fracturing it and rendering him unconscious.
When
Franz or Heinz
awoke he was lying in a hospital bed, or at least it looked to him like a hospital bed other than the fact that he realized, when he went to scratch his nose, that his hands were chained to the metal rails alongside him. There were three others in the room with him, only one of whom looked like a doctor. They looked down at him with what looked to him like curiosity.
‘
You have only yourself to blame’, said Suares, the tallest of the three, in good English.
‘
You speak English? It was a set-up, you know? I go to apartment. This man, he call, he say to bring money…’
Franz or Heinz’s
voice trailed off. Even he could tell that it was difficult to deny he had attempted to buy two kilos of cocaine.