"Now," she said. "Where were we."
A door slammed outside. I leaned in to kiss her neck. My fingers groped for her zipper. Footsteps came our way. A heavy hand grabbed the bathroom doork.n.o.b, yanked it, rattled it, fought with it.
Lynn pitched her voice high, spoke over my shoulder. "That you, Jeremiah?"
"Oh." Pitt"s voice, m.u.f.fled. "Sorry, Mom. Use the one downstairs."
We held our breath, waited for the footsteps to retreat. I pulled her zipper all the way down, stepped back. A hand fumbled below my waist. Her deft fingers released my fly. She knelt on the shimmering white tiles.
"Mom?" I said.
She giggled, her mouth full.
SEVEN.
Ambo said, "Pitt is not your friend."
He shuffled the cards. Bridged the deck, fluttered the two halves together. He dealt a new game of solitaire.
Watch out for Dad when the cards come out, dude. It means he"s p.i.s.sed. Real p.i.s.sed. One of those self-control tricks? When he"s torturing dissidents, sometimes it"s the only thing between them and a bullet in the brain.
I said, "I realize that."
We were in the warden"s office. Ambo sat at the man"s creaking metal desk. A Peruvian flag, red and white, drooped in one corner. Behind him, on either side of the far door-a separate entrance?-two American marines in crisp khaki shirtsleeves and blue trousers stood to attention. They wore pistols in white holsters on their hips, carried black riot sticks in their hands.
"You think he cares for you? He gives a s.h.i.t?" Ambo hawked up a loogie and spat on the floor. "He used you. For a job. I told him to. And now he"s using you again."
"What for this time?" I asked.
Ambo"s rumpled tuxedo hung limp from his shoulders, the starch overwhelmed by his body heat. A bow tie dangled loose at his neck. Emeralds glittered at his cuffs. I thought of snakes. Where had I seen that shade before?
He looked at me over the rim of his reading gla.s.ses. "Don"t pretend that you don"t know," he said. "Why are you protecting him?"
I rested my elbows on my knees. The Peruvian cops breathed loudly behind me. I wiped a trickle of s.h.i.t-smelling snot from my upper lip.
"Look," I said. "I was enjoying my facial scrub. Salon next door? Bucket a la merde? Why don"t you just tell me what you want. So I can get back to it."
Ambo licked a finger, lifted a card from his draw pile. He held it out, looked down his long beak of a nose at it, discarded it. He flipped over a new card, a king. His hand trembled.
I snapped my fingers in his face. "You hear what I just said?"
Without looking up, he said softly, voice barely audible, "How old am I?"
He planted the king. A new foundation. A flick of his wrist, and an emerald winked at me. I gasped. It was Lynn, her million-carat eyes an inch from mine, the gla.s.sy sadness of an aging wh.o.r.e.
"How old are you," I said. "The f.u.c.k is going on here?"
Ambo drew another card. Discarded it. His tuxedo soaked up the light from the overhead lamp, a bespoke black hole, and disappeared. His black head floated above the stabbing isosceles triangle of his white shirtfront.
He said, "Answer the question." His voice was quiet, controlled. As though suppressing bottled hysteria.
"This is about Lynn, isn"t it," I said. "Some sort of weird f.u.c.ked-up revenge. You"re p.i.s.sed that I was sleeping with her. Is that it?"
He froze for an instant, before slowly playing another card. His fist clutched the deck tight, his knuckles white.
I scooted my chair closer to the desk. Stood. Rested my knuckles on the flaking leather blotter. The mouth breathers behind me took a step forward, but did not interfere. I put my palm flat on top of his card game.
I said, "Ambo? Lynn is dead. And I am sorry." I leaned over the desk as far as I could go, trying to catch his eye, but he avoided my gaze. "But it wasn"t me."
Ambo looked at my hand, as though unsure what to do with an unexpected joker. "Randy?" he said.
Before I could say, No, not really, one of the marines came to attention.
"Sir!"
He strode to Ambo"s side. Peered down at the cards. His peaked cap brushed my forehead. I didn"t move my hand. He pointed with an outstretched index finger, clad in white. "Black knave on red queen, sir."
Ambo nodded. He pried the jack from under my middle finger, moved it to the right. "Knave on queen. Thank you, Randy."
"Sir."
The room was cold but sweat beaded on Ambo"s forehead. A drop grew in the furrow above his eyebrows, ran along his nose until it hung from the tip, a future stalact.i.te. He looked up at me. Again, he asked, "How old am I?"
I slashed sideways at the cards, wiped them from the surface of the desk with my forearm. "Didn"t you hear me?" I said. "I told you it wasn"t me."
"I know it wasn"t. It was Pitt." His brown eyes jumped up at me from deep inside his motionless skull. His gaze whipped my head back. I crumpled, caught myself against the back of the chair. I coughed, tasted bile.
"Pitt killed his own mother?"
"Answer the question."
"Why he would do such a thing? I have no idea, Ambo," I said. "I really don"t."
His voice rose in crescendo, rage and panic blending together. "My age, Horace."
"The f.u.c.k it matter?" I stood, knocked over my chair with the backs of my calves. Brown hands gripped my shoulders, picked up the chair and slammed me down.
Ambo folded his large hands, as though in prayer. Linked together they were the size of a small melon. "How old am I?" he asked.
"Old enough to know better, but not old enough to care."
He did not so much as grin. "How old is that?"
I sat silent.
"Horace." His voice was a growl, a bear prepared to rip your throat out.
"Seventy-five."
He dropped his feet to the floor. Took off his gla.s.ses, laid them aside. Rubbed the bridge of his nose between a giant thumb and forefinger.
"Seventy-five years old." He drummed his hand on the metal desk, a sound like rain pattering on rooftops. "And this is not," -and here his fist smacked the hollow metal surface, the remaining cards twitching, the warden"s name plaque bouncing- "not how I am going to die."
I looked at my own puny white hands, then at Ambo"s muscular pile driver of a fist. His fingers were thick as carrots, the tips calloused and hard.
"What makes you think you"re going to die?" I asked.
His fist rose up, the warhammer of the G.o.ds. Crashed down on the desk, denting it this time. He flung the remaining cards into the air, Lynn"s emerald eye twinkling amidst the blue paisley rain of dots and cartoon heads. With a primeval roar he overturned the desk.
I leaped backward. Footfalls shuffled behind me, as though drawn by the disorder, some atavistic urge to corral the chaos. Stopped. The marines on either side of Ambo had not flinched.
"What makes you think you"re not?" he demanded.
He glowered at me from under those monstrous eyebrows. I had the sudden vision of horns curving from his temples, a red tail twitching back and forth as he offered Faust a bargain.
I said, "So go ahead and kill me. What"s the problem?"
Ambo took out a pack of Camels. Put the pack to his mouth, kissed it, came away with a cigarette between his lips. From a side pocket, a box of wooden matches. He rattled it, removed a match. Scratched the red tip against the box, the smell of sulfur floating across at me. He held the flame to the tip of the white paper.
"Let me ask you something, Horace," he said, exhaling smoke. "Do you just say that? Or do you really mean it? Are you prepared to die?"
"Prepared to-" My tongue refused to finish the thought.
I had almost died in that bucket of s.h.i.t. And I realized I was not prepared. That I didn"t want to die.
"Because I"m not," he continued. "At least not yet."
He puffed deep, holding the smoke in his lungs. Settled into the swivel chair. The frame creaked under his weight. The tip of the cigarette glowed orange in the dim light. He held it at arm"s length.
"No," he said. "This is not how I want to die." He looked at me again, and I struggled to endure his battering gaze. "But I can see why it appeals to you."
G.o.d. I began to wish I hadn"t told him. I looked at the floor. "I don"t know what you mean."
Ambo sat forward, his great bulk now resting on his elbows. He blew smoke through his nose. His broad shoulders hunched over, head dangling loose, a buzzard drawn to carrion.
"You know," he said, "I understand you better than you think."
"You understand," I said, and sneered. "What do you think you understand? You sound like Lynn now."
He ignored the reference to my affair with his wife. "It wasn"t the money," he went on. "You aren"t the type who can be bought."
"Yeah, OK, we know that."
"And you"re not a patriot."
I shrugged. "Land of the slaves and the home of the fearful."
"So I"m guessing," he said, and he c.o.c.ked his head, fist at his ear, the cigarette smoldering orange at his temple, my vision of devil"s horns returning in a rush that made me gasp, "I"m guessing it"s for love."
"Love?" I said. I laughed. "The f.u.c.k you talking about?"
"Was there a woman there? Is that it?"
"What woman? Where?"
"Guangzhou Higher Polytechnic."
"For f.u.c.k"s sake. That was how many years ago?"
"We read your email, you know."
I"d spent a year teaching English in China. This was ten years ago, before my ex-wife, before South America, before Peru, before Kate, before La Paz. Back in the days when life was good, the world was simple and I was happy. I"d dated one of my students for a while. Ping Ping. Still sent me naked pictures by email, hoping I would return.
"So?"
"So..." He crossed his arms. "You got a big drug habit. Where"s the money come from, pay for that?"
"Let me get this straight," I said. "You think I"m working for the Chinese? What are you, crazy?"
"Let"s skip the denials," he said. "I don"t have time. I need to know where Pitt is and how to stop him."
I held my hands out wide, gaped at the ceiling. "f.u.c.k if I know."
"Are they blackmailing you? Is that it?"
"What blackmail? What are you talking about?"
"Maybe they tell the Peruvians you"re here. An illegal immigrant. Get you deported back to the States." He spoke around his cigarette. "Is that it? So you can work pumping gas to pay back child support for the rest of your life?"
A rare moment of calm settled on my soul. I had pondered on many late drug-addled nights how to respond to such a threat, should it happen again. I was ready. I blew my nose in my palm and wiped it on my pants.
"I have a rule," I said. "A no-suicide rule. It"s the only rule I have. No. Let me finish." I spoke slower now, to make sure he heard ever word. "I"m allowed to self-destruct in any way I want to. I deserve to suffer in this life. But I"m not allowed to die." I held up an index finger. "There is one exception to this rule." I moved close to his face and whispered, "Anyone tries to put me on a plane back to the States? I will be dead before it lands."
I grinned and slouched in my chair. "So go ahead and make my day, Jack." I drew my finger across my neck in a slitting motion. "You can only play that card once. It won"t work a second time."
Ambo stared at me for a long moment, unmoving. The smoke from his cigarette snaked in circles around his head. He jabbed the leg of the upturned desk with a monstrous digit. The ancient metal bent under the pressure.
"Pitt is betraying his country. I know you don"t care about that. But he does. And I do. Can you at least tell me why? Why would he do such a thing?"
"Why would he kill Lynn? Why is the moon a rotting hunk of Flemish blue cheese? f.u.c.k if I know."