"Hak Po and his people, they will hurt you. They will kill you."
"Great," I said. "Sounds like a plan. You got a phone here I can borrow?"
Ambo frowned. "What for?"
"Find me an undertaker."
Pitt sat forward now, his face contorted in concern. Real or faked? It was impossible to tell. "You know what they did to the guy who planted that camera?"
"Pitt-"
"Shut up, Dad. They broke his kneecaps, is what."
"Why didn"t they just kill him?"
"No," Ambo said. "They don"t kill you. At least not right away. They understand suffering. They understand pain. Death is too easy. Too simple. They prefer to hurt you in ways you"ll never forget."
Pitt took a big gulp of his Scotch. "They don"t like being double-crossed."
I looked at him, searching for a sign, some confirmation of sincerity. "Neither do I."
Pitt"s lips quivered. His eyes dropped to his lap. "Please, Horse." Were those tears in his eyes? The big bad CIA a.s.sa.s.sin himself? "I don"t want to see you hurt."
"You forgot one thing," I said.
Ambo dropped the basketball in his lap. He bridged his fingertips. "Oh? What"s that?"
"A man without his legs can always crawl." I tore the photo in half and dropped it into the salsa. "Closer to the ground where he belongs."
The two of them exchanged glances. Pitt stared at the ground.
"You know, Horse," Ambo said casually, "you"re an illegal immigrant to Peru."
Panic stabbed me in the gut. "You wouldn"t dare."
"Your ex-wife is badgering the State Department to get you home. Seems you owe back child support."
Red spots filled my vision. "For a kid who isn"t even mine!"
He shrugged. "Whoever said life was fair?"
I tipped the table over. Winegla.s.ses, half-eaten plates of ceviche, and two enormous bowls of guacamole and salsa smashed to the bricks. Ambo jumped out of the way. I staggered toward the house.
Pitt grabbed my elbow. "It"s not what you think."
I threw my elbow back, hoping to connect with his face, but managed only to break his grip. "Then what the f.u.c.k is it? This your idea? Pretend to be my friend, then stab me in the back?"
I lurched drunkenly to the door. The maid blocked my path.
"Move your a.s.s, b.i.t.c.h," I said in Spanish.
She put her feet at shoulder width, her arms loose at her sides.
"Three-time Peruvian judo champion," Ambo called out. "I wouldn"t f.u.c.k with her."
"I told you not to do it this way."
Ambo sighed. "Maybe you were right."
"No f.u.c.king maybe, Dad."
"Hey," he said. "Watch the mouth."
"For f.u.c.k"s sake."
Ambo"s finger wagged enormous, the size of a carrot. "I mean it."
"Let me out of here," I said. "I"ll take the bus. You and your CIA bulls.h.i.t can go screw."
I looked around. Swaying. Drunk. Only way out was by the beach. I stumbled toward the brick steps that led to the water.
Something heavy hit me in the back, fell to the ground. "Think fast," Ambo called out.
A manila envelope lay at my feet. I picked it up. "What"s this?"
They didn"t say anything. I opened it. Wads of US currency. Used bills.
"Benjamins, my friend," Pitt said. "Big BFs."
"How much is in here?"
Ambo leaned sideways on the overturned table. He looked bored. "Twenty thousand. Another twenty after."
I took out the bundle of money. I unbound the packet of bills. It felt like a brick in my hand. I ran toward the edge of the patio, hurled the stack of bills into the air. They travelled a few feet before exploding in a shower of green and black. The sea breeze caught them, carried them fluttering across the beach.
"You think you can buy me?" I said. "Think you can threaten me? f.u.c.k with my head? Send your son, tell him to be my friend? What kind of bulls.h.i.t is that, man?"
I stumbled onto the beach, looked up at them on the patio. I shouted, "What kind of people are you?"
Time pa.s.sed. I walked along the beach for ages, but it couldn"t have been that long, because when I sat down there were wet hundred-dollar bills on the sand. I picked one up. It was covered in vomit. Who would vomit on all that money? My mouth tasted sour. Furry. The sun blared down judgment from its noontime perch. The waves rolled out to sea, retreating from the earth. I clutched my shins with my hands, rested my chin on my knees.
Sand dusted my toes. I took a deep breath, let it out. I lifted my head, blinked in the sunlight. Pitt sat next to me, legs reclined, resting on an elbow. He twiddled his toes in the sand.
"It isn"t what you think," he said.
"No," I said. "It"s worse."
"I actually like you, you know. I do."
"So you admit it."
He lifted a handful of sand, let it trickle through his fingers. "At first it was just business." He shrugged. "But then I got to know you."
"For f.u.c.k"s sake."
"Believe what you want." He sat up. "I told him not to do it. Not this way."
"Why did you go to all this trouble?" I asked. "Why not just blackmail me and be done with it?"
"Would that have worked?"
"Well... No."
"You see? I told him." His hands beseeched the heavens for understanding. "Not the kind of person that you are."
"Quit your a.s.s-kissing and f.u.c.k off," I said.
"I"m not kissing your a.s.s."
"Whatever." Another thought. "There must be dozens of people with access to Hak Po"s office. Why does it have to be me?"
Pitt scratched an ear. "I"ve asked myself that too."
"What? I mean, you don"t know?"
"I do what the boss tells me. It"s not my job to question orders."
"Well you can tell the boss I"m not going to help you."
His head dropped to his chest. A wave crashed into sh.o.r.e. He said, "Alright."
I swallowed. My throat was dry. "Alright, then."
He touched my shoulder with his open palm. "You"re an alien species to me, you know that?"
"That"s me," I said. "Little green man from Lima."
"I"ve never met anyone who was so hard on himself."
"How am I hard on myself?" I said.
"You see? You don"t even realize. You hold yourself to an impossibly high standard. You hate yourself for a terrible thing that happened to you-"
"G.o.ddammit, don"t you dare-"
"-happened to you, that was not your fault!"
I rolled onto my knees, climbed to my feet. I walked toward the ocean, Benjamin Franklin"s face sticking to my plantar warts.
"You need to move on with your life," he said. His feet slapped behind me. "You hear me?" he shouted.
I broke into a drunken run. He ran after me onto the wet sand. Breakers trickled through my toes. Something sharp bit into the bottom of my foot, a sh.e.l.l perhaps, and I fell to my knees in the thin waves. My hands plowed into the soft sand. The smell of the ocean forced its way into my sinuses, filled my lungs with a purity unknown in Lima.
Pitt dropped to the ground in front of me. "I won"t lie to you," he said. "You were a job for me. I admit it. But you"ve made me rethink what I do and why I do it. You have that affect on people."
"Really," I said. You could spread my sarcasm on toast.
"You had that affect on me." He laughed. "The last dozen dissidents I killed, it took all my self-control to pluck their eyeb.a.l.l.s out and chop off their fingers. To let them suffer for days. I didn"t even enjoy raping the women. I wanted to put them out of their misery, but those weren"t the orders."
"Ambo"s orders."
"Yes," he said simply.
The sun was hot on my neck and I felt dizzy. I vomited into the surf. Long choking heaves. I recognized the guacamole, the corn chips, the ceviche. The back of my throat burned with stomach acid. I didn"t understand what he was talking about. What effect could I possibly have had on Pitt? I scooped up chunks of my vomit, pressed them together to make a mound in the sand.
Pitt slumped down next to me. He rested his elbows on his knees, stretched out his arms to the sea. "Will you do this for me?"
"Do what?" I mumbled, scooping up more vomit for my sand castle. Or was it a vomit castle?
"This one thing."
I jerked my head at the house. A wave broke over my hands, dissolved my sculpture. More food for the crabs. I said, "What Ambo wants."
He ran a sandy finger across his sunburned lower lip. "Never ask you for another favor."
I hung my head. He was waiting for an answer. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say? My stomach cramped in sour knots. I squinted at the sun.
He lowered his voice. "We can get you a new pa.s.sport," he whispered. "Even pay your child support for you."
My head jerked sideways. "You"d do that for me?"
"Sure," he said. "What are friends for?"
I nodded drunkenly. "Friends." Is that what we were? I was no longer sure.
Pitt was talking again. "All we need is this one little favor." He held out his fist. It was covered in bits of dry sand, and tanned to a deep brown. It seemed different, harder, sharper than it had that morning in the surf.
He said, "Do it for a bro?"
My head hurt. "For a bro."
"Yes," he said, fist unwavering. "For a friend."
I dug my hands deeper into the sand at my sides. In the year since Lili died, he was the only friend I"d made. And a pretty lousy friend, too. I did not like being threatened or bullied. But if he really could get me a new pa.s.sport, get me off the hook with my ex-wife, I"d be able to travel again... I had to take that chance. Even if it meant being complicit in the murder of an unknown spy. I said, "You ask this of me, it"s the last thing we ever do."
The fist quivered in the air in front of me. "You don"t mean that."
I looked at the water as it rushed in to sh.o.r.e, imagined the millions of organisms in a single drop, simple creatures unworried by questions of betrayal, guilt.