Kilometer 99 (28 page)

“What in the devil is this little Chinese girl doing in my office?” asks the man at the desk.

Pardon Me Mother clears his throat. “She says that she was there last night,
Macizo,
that she has information.”

The cop leans over and speaks into the boss's ear.

The boss removes his glasses and rubs at the space between his eyes. “All right,” he says. “Let's hear what you have to say.”

“Yes, sir.” I swallow. “This is all a big misunderstanding. You see, we believed we were doing this errand for you, for your … organization. That big-haired gringo, the one with the eye patch, he's an idiot. He made arrangements with those other…” I struggle to come up with a word that they won't find offensive. “Other salesmen. Ben—the bearded one—and I, we didn't know. We thought it was a service to you. Instantly, we saw the error.”

The boss stares on at me, impatient and unmoved. “You were there last night?”

“Yes.”

“To whom did you deliver those goods?” he asks.

I pause. “It was a blue house, a few blocks from here. There were two men. I didn't recognize them.”

“And the original delivery?”

“By sea.” I suddenly feel useful, like I have something to offer. “There were two of them as well, their faces covered with handkerchiefs. At the cove we call Kilometer Ninety-nine.”

The boss turns to the policeman, who offers him a nod. They seem to know all this already.

The boss turns back to me. “Is that all?”

I decide to lay all of my cards on the table. “I have the money. I assume you have the product or know how you can get it. I need the bearded one back. That's all I ask.”

The boss crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Where are you from?” he asks me in perfect English.

“The States.” I switch to English as well. “Hawai‘i, actually.”

“Do you know much about the Conflict?”

“The Conflict?”

“Yes. The civil war that took place in this country not so long ago.”

It's the last question I expect him to ask. “A little,” I say. “I've lived in El Salvador for nearly two years, most of the time in a small village north of here. Some of the families there fought with the Frente, most with the army.” I shrug. “It's hard not to hear things, under those circumstances.

“Have you heard of El Mozote?” His English is excellent.

I nod. “I visited. Almost two years ago.”

“You've been there?” He raises his eyebrows. “Seen the little memorial with the silhouettes?”

“Yes,” I say. “It's very moving.”

The policeman's chair creaks as he leans back and crosses his legs. As I thought this morning, he doesn't appear to understand English.

“I was there, you know,” the boss man continues, “on that day twenty years ago. I come from a village nearby. I lost my family then. You understand what happened, yes?”

“Rape,” I say. “Murder. Women and children all killed for no good reason. Some pretense about finding the guerilla.”

“Little girls.” He holds up the palm of his hand to indicate a short stature. “Ten or twelve years old. Can you imagine? They cut off heads until their arms were tired and their machetes were dull. Then they used the machine guns.”

Tears well up behind my eyes. The room goes silent but for the slow rotation of the fan above, like the blades on an old helicopter.

“The journalists always mention that those soldiers were the ones trained by the gringos.”

I manage to whisper, “I'm not really a gringo.”

“But I tend to think it's impossible to train anyone to commit that kind of brutality.”

I nod.

“These young men today”—he points with his lips at Pardon Me Mother—“they will never suffer the way that my generation suffered.” He shakes his head. “And still they walk around as if they have some chip on their shoulder.”

I turn toward Pardon Me Mother. He doesn't understand a word. I wonder if the two of them are related.

“Let me ask you something,” the boss says. “What do you believe you were doing there last night?”

“Last night?” With the El Mozote story, I've nearly forgotten my reason for coming here. “I thought we would make some fast money. Cash was stolen from us recently. This … this errand—it seemed a good way to settle things. That's all.”

The boss man nods. “Some fast money. A way to even accounts.” He turns to the cop momentarily, then back to me. “It's interesting. I hid in a tree and watched twenty years ago as those so-called soldiers committed all those horrible acts—killing children as if they were breaking open anthills. I asked myself, How can one do such things? Now I understand that they couldn't see it for what it was. If I had asked one of those young men, all he would have said was, ‘I was pulling a trigger, following orders.' And the superiors—who are even more irredeemable—they'd have simply said they were winning a war, saving their country from godless communism. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I think so,” I say. “It all depends on the frame of reference. If your focus is too narrow or too wide, you can obscure the act itself. Not see it for what it is.”

From the main room down the hall, a ranchero song suddenly blares. Pardon Me Mother turns his head toward the sound, unsure if he should go and silence it.

“So when you say that you were only interested in some fast money, a small measure of economic justice, I have to ask myself, Does she not understand the kinds of consequences associated with this thing that she did last night? Or is she just stupid?”

“Consequences?” After following his meandering line of thought for so many minutes, I'm now confused. “You mean for the users?” Is this man about to lecture me on the dangers of drug abuse?

“What I mean,” he pounds one meaty fist upon the table, “are the consequences of starting a rivalry in my business. Have you any idea the sort of bloodshed that occurs whenever there's a power vacuum in this industry? Young Salvadoran men—my friends and family, in some cases—will have to die by the dozens if anyone presents a real challenge to me in this city.” He shouts now, both hands clasped upon the desk's edge, flecks of his spittle dotting the top. “So tell me: Why should those two moronic gringos be spared?”

I fear that my legs might collapse beneath me. The scariest thing of all, I find, is that he's absolutely right. “I swear to you, I didn't know there was any rivalry. All I did was drive. It was that other gringo who made the arrangements with the men from the blue house.”

“Of course.” He shakes his head and snickers. “Only driving—turning the wheel and pushing the pedals. Only earning a little fast money.”

Pardon Me Mother and the policeman tentatively laugh along with him; neither knows why.

“I thought we were working for you,” I say.

“Oh yes! I forgot,” he says sarcastically. “You were performing a service for me. You were on my side, right? Tell me: Do you know what they called that operation in El Mozote?”

“Operation Rescue.” Why do I remember that?

“That's correct,” he says. “Operation Rescue.” He smiles, nearly laughing at the absurdity of it.

We pass a tense few seconds in which the only sound is the music from down the hall.

“I have your money.” I take the four wads of dollars out of my pockets and drop them all upon his desk. “I need Ben released; then we'll be no more trouble to you.”

The boss man quickly puts all the cash into one of his desk drawers, as if the sight of it is somehow unseemly.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “Please.”

He lets out a big sigh, looking bored by the whole exchange. He turns to the policeman and says in Spanish, “Let those two idiots go already.” He shakes his head, still staring at the cop. “If there's any thing that's more trouble than one dead American, it's two dead Americans.”

“Or three.” The cop points an index finger in my direction, like a pistol.

Everyone but me laughs.

The cop rises from his chair and lets himself out through the iron door at the side.

“Thank you,” I say to the boss man. I fight a sudden urge to prostrate myself at his feet, to kiss his ring or touch the edge of his garment—some timeless and Catholic show of respect.

He stands up from his chair and shrugs. “It's only logical, really.” He pulls the drawer open, removes all the money I gave him, and stuffs it into a paper bag. He rolls the top down and makes a handle, like it's a big sandwich.

“Well done,” he says to Pardon Me Mother. “She's all yours. Nothing too rough, eh?”

“
Simón.
” Pardon Me smiles and nods.

“How's that?” I stop myself before asking what he means by “She's all yours.”

The boss goes to the iron door. Pardon Me Mother reaches out and runs the back side of his first two fingers down my cheek.

“
¡Tranquila!
” he hisses, as if I were a horse about to be broken. The gold tooth flashes from between his lips.

“What the hell?” I say to the boss in English.

He opens the door, turns back to me, and shrugs. “It's how things are done. Your friends have suffered for their offense. Isn't it fitting that you suffer a little as well?”

“You can't just offer me to him!” I swat away Pardon Me's hand.

“You'll survive,” the boss man says. “In this country, we've been doing it for decades. Who knows? Perhaps you'll even grow stronger.”

The iron door shuts with a clang.

Pardon Me Mother steps toward me. “
Vaya.
” He undoes the buckle of his belt and slips it out through the loops of his pants. “You can relax, or we can do this the hard way. Your decision.”

The sight of him physically sickens me. The door is only a few meters away, on the room's far side. With both hands, I push him in the sternum and let out a groan. He's more solid than I expected. My shove doesn't move him an inch. I step high and try to run around him instead.

Then the blow. The belt is wrapped around his hand. I hear the sound before I feel anything. It's a crack like an old tree falling—the sound of something strong giving way. The taste of sweaty leather fills the inside of my mouth, followed by the mineral warmth of blood.

Finally, there's the pain. It's like a foreign thing along my lips and teeth, under my gums, my skin. My vision goes grainy, then fades to black. In my former life, this would be the part where they'd blow the whistle, when everybody would take a step back and the grown-ups would come onto the court. But that life is thousands of miles from here. My limp body bends and twists through the blackness as through a big wave after a wipeout.

With my tongue, I try to count my own teeth but can't keep the numbers straight. When I open my eyes again, my face is down against the plastic top of the desk. My arms are bound behind me somehow—both bent so far, they feel broken. I move my hands a little and brush the low-grade leather of that same
EL SALVADOR
belt.

There's an audible grunt, then a sudden gust of air against my hips. With one violent motion, my jeans are pulled down to my ankles. Pardon Me Mother steps back into my field of vision. The tattoo on his forehead still asks forgiveness, but his eyes offer no penance.

“You see.” He reaches one hand up to the tight bundle of my arms. “This would all be so much easier if you would just relax!”

He torques an end of the belt. One arm feels as if it's about to come away at the shoulder; the other is numb from fingers to elbow. I try to resist, but that grinds my aching mouth farther into the desk. Pardon Me Mother slaps my ass with his open hand, and that feels like the only part of me that's not about to shatter.

He lets go of my arms. I shut my eyes and open them. Now Pardon Me has his own dick in his hand. It's crooked and uncircumcised, like a length of knotty wood or one of those blind subterranean moles. He spits into his palm twice and then rubs the saliva into the skin of his cock. I squirm with every remaining muscle but get nowhere. Even my feet are bound by the wad of denim around my ankles.

Now I can't see him, but I feel him pull at my arms from behind.

“Get away!” I scream through a broken mouth. “Help!” I can't tell if it's English or Spanish or just some soup of syllables.

Pardon Me's whole body presses me against the desk. His kneecap pushes my legs apart. I feel that crooked dick against the inside of my thigh. He puts one of his hands over my mouth. He hardly has to cover it, only to pinch and prod at the wound enough to shut me up.

Then that same hand—now wet with my own blood and spittle—is below my navel and moving lower. The tears come hard, wetting my cheek and pooling up on the plastic top of the desk. They make a puddle right in the spot where I laid that money down—which I believed would be the last sacrifice I'd have to make in this room.

“Stop! Stop!” I squirm and kick, but he has my lower body pinned against his. His palm presses into my pubic hair. Two moist fingers pry me open and make way for the ragged fingernail of a third.

“Relax,” he hisses into my ear again.

Finally, I wonder if he's right. I cannot stop him, no matter how hard I try. Is this my punishment after all? I've been trying to undo fate for weeks now. I couldn't simply accept the earthquake or the loss of my project. Even the stolen passport wouldn't convince me to give up on the trip. Will it take being raped by a gangster to teach me that this nation and this world are indifferent to my plans? The fight drains from my limbs. I blow a hot breath out through my bloody lips. Relax. Stop fighting. Surrender.

In that very instant, the pressure on both sides of my pelvis abates.

“That's enough, Cheecho.
¡Basta!
” A different voice is in the room with us, speaking a gravelly Spanish. “Take a step back.”