Blood Lake (27 page)

Well, his interrogation methods have improved. I give him an open look.

“What did you see in him?”

I'm sorry to say this, sad as it is: “There were only a handful of people in this world who I could truly count on. He was one of them.”

Captain Ponce nods. “Loyalty is a noble emotion,” he says. He wipes his mouth, pushes his plate away.

He asks point-blank, “Do you hate me?”

“I don't hate anybody. I just remember things.”

We sit silently as the waiter clears the table.

“Why are you back here?” he asks.

“I just came to visit for a few weeks. Really. Then Padre Samuel Campos was murdered.”

“Hmm. I saw about that.”

“I'd give anything to examine his body, speak to the suspect in person.”

“Nothing I can do. The police have him.”

“Where?”

“That's police business.”

“Padre Samuel saved
both
our lives,” I remind him.

“Yes. But I owe
you
. You were supposed to kill me.”

“And you me.”

“Yes.”

I finally ask him, “Why are you only a captain? I thought you'd be at least a major by now.”

“Don't you know? That's right, you weren't here. I tried to kill the president.”

I call my family to let them know I'm fine, and to make sure that Antonia's okay.

We find a waterfront bar. Noisy. Dark. Anonymous. I'm certainly dressed for it.

Eyes gleam sideways in the shadows, looking at me, at him, at the uniform, memorizing the details.

Keep looking. You'll never see me in these rags again.

Ponce finds a remote corner, offers me the darkest spot. Quite chivalrous, really.

A minute later the barman comes over. A record for this place, I think.

“Two
canelasos
,” Ponce orders.

One eye narrows to a slit. This crusty old suds merchant clearly knows that only some crazy
serranos
would order a warm drink in the middle of the hottest season.

Normally the idea would be never to attract attention, but it's a little late for that. With his stiffly brushed parade uniform and tight-assed commanding style, Ponce might as well order a flaming zombie.

We toast each other.

He orders more. Some men do not know how to sip alcohol. And soon the thin blade of his tongue softens and the words start to bubble up and percolate out of him.

“You probably didn't even hear about it up in the
Yunay
, but it was big. Big scandal. The armed forces wanted to buy twenty-five German fighter planes. The best. Better than the overpriced crap the Americans sell us, anyway. Total cost, five billion dollars. That's right, dollars. Think the Germans want to fuck around with sucres?”

“I guess not.”

“Anyway, getting congressional approval for them was a bitch. But our luck held out and the rebels struck. They ambushed and killed three
consejeros
. Then they kidnapped a couple of oil company workers and a desk sergeant from Quito who later turned up in a ditch with the initials of the movement carved in his forehead.”

“That doesn't sound like—”

Right.

“So thanks to all that rebel activity, the government declares a security crisis and the deal goes through. Then the shipment arrives.
Five planes
. So where's the rest of the shipment? The finance ministers are going nuts, threatening to go to war against Germany. Can you imagine? War with Germany?” Ponce laughs. “Where's the rest of the shipment? Where's
the four billion dollars
? Two hours later we receive sealed orders to report to the Ariel Air Force Base, where President Pajizo's socksucker, General Duarte, makes us spend the night burning documents as if we were abandoning the city to the enemy or something. Lots of big German words, but I can read the numbers. And it sure looks like a contract for five planes at two hundred million dollars apiece. Then around two in the morning we were told that a mistake had been made, and that some of the documents had to be ‘re-created.' So they start retyping the documents and resigning General Vélez's signature. The German's the same, I guess, but the numbers aren't. It looks a lot like a contract for twenty-five planes at a total cost of five billion.

“Now, we fought in the Peruvian jungle with General Vélez and—well, you know what the conditions were like— and we're loyal to him. So one of us cracked open the oyster and when General Vélez heard that Pajizo's
compadre
, General Duarte, was ordering us to forge incriminating documents with his signature on them, he dug in at the Manta Air Force Base with hundreds of his men.

“That night a dozen of our most experienced fighter pilots received orders from the president himself to arm their jets and bomb Manta. They responded that they'd rather join Vélez and bomb the presidential palace, if that was how he wanted to play it. When Pajizo figured out that ninety percent of the military stood behind General Vélez, he backed down. But the next day all the press releases and all the TV reports said that
we
had tried to overthrow the president. I felt sick. Was this my Ecuador? The Ecuador I fought for on three fronts and would die for at a moment's notice?”

He looks me in the eye. In spite of everything, there's a bond there.

He goes on. “Within hours, General Vélez was charged with treason, found guilty and sentenced to ninety-nine years in the stockade, when you and I know damn well that the maximum sentence allowed under the Constitution is sixteen years. It's as if the law is nothing but dead letters to those guys.

“Now every true soldier's blood was boiling as soon as we found out about it. We're discussing what sort of action we should be taking, when I get word that General Duarte wants to see me. They escort me up to his office, and he orders me to select fifteen commandos for a special job. So I assemble a team of the most trustworthy men you'd ever want to meet, and the next morning we're standing on the tarmac awaiting further orders. But General Duarte's nowhere in sight. It's starting to get weird. The next thing we know the president's plane is landing, and the commanding officer's missing. We went on parade to meet him, and there's Lieutenant Colonel Abismo ordering us to disarm. Then that dickhead Pajizo gets off the plane surrounded by nineteen or twenty bodyguards. Suddenly there's a shot from I don't know where and his bodyguards form a circle around their man and start shooting
at us
, for fuck's sake. They killed
seven
loyal officers.”

Another order of drinks has appeared. I leave mine alone. Ponce gulps his down and continues: “But we're fighters. We spend our lives training for this kind of shit, and within seconds we were taking cover and shooting to kill every one of Pajizo's mother-raping bodyguards. It was completely insane. Nobody was giving orders. Somebody shouted, ‘Kill Pajizo!' And I hear Pajizo yelling, ‘Get your hands off me, I'm the president!' Then the TV crews arrived—I don't know who the hell sent for
them
—and I got thrust up in front of the cameras to explain that
el presidente
had tried to change our republic into a dictatorship, and that we would release him as soon as he set General Vélez free. They actually asked for proof that the president was still alive! So we brought him out. And that piece of dog crap, Fernando Pajizo, got on TV
and said that he was ordering General Vélez's release, and that he would not seek action against the ‘commandos' of the Ariel Air Force Base. He told us off camera that if he ever went back on his word, we could spit in his face. But somebody sure busted me down to captain. And I'm still waiting to get within spitting distance of his face.”

“You're lucky that's all they did.” If that story's even half-true.

I ask him, “How come you're free?”

“I've only lost three lives. I still have four left.”

And he smiles.

Must be the light. I'd swear he has eyes like a cat.

We stand under the white arches on the perimeter of a deserted square and watch the rain pummel the streets.

Captain Ponce tells me he has to report to Shushuqui in three days, deep in the northeast jungle. Oil country. But first he wants to do me a favor.

“There is one person who might know something about why anyone would want your precious Padre wiped off the map.”

He pauses for effect, the manipulative SOB.

“Herrera.”

My bag is starting to smell like a slop bucket full of rotting sheep parts.

“Herrera?”

“An old comrade of yours, yes? He's in the military prison.”

I listen to the sound of the rain stippling the expansive puddles.

“How is he?”

“We're keeping him alive.”

My eyes question him.

“If he were in the police prison, he'd be dead by now.”

There's a standard to measure yourself by.

But some rules can be bent. He thinks he can get me in to see my old
compañero
.

He says, “You see? General Duarte's not such a bad guy.”

“Yeah: If we had trains, he'd make them run on time.”

“Take you home on my motorcycle?”

“No, thanks.”

“Don't want me to know where you live, eh?” he says, smiling like he already knows it.

Too bad. It would have been quicker. And taxi drivers remember. Oh, well.

I'm damp enough to grow moss on my back but past the point of caring by the time I climb aboard a windowless bus with no interior lights, except for a ring of blinking colored bulbs around a glowing picture of Jesus.

Someday we're going to put our own rocket ship into space and the command module is going to have a strip of orange shag with tufted pom-poms on the instrument panel, rows of gaudy Christmas lights around the portholes, and one of those postcards of Jesus that wink at you hanging from the rearview mirror.

No one looks at me too hard. But they can smell me.

When I get home, I take the bag of clothes up to the rooftop sink and try to wash them by hand. But the blood is stiff and set by now, and parts of it are as hard as paint. None of the traditional household remedies will get it all out.

I walk five blocks west and toss the bag into a communal dump.