Boy Kills Man (2 page)

Alberto played a very different style. If my best friend won the ball, which he often did without waiting for a pass, you could be sure he wouldn't give it up. Instead, he would thunder for the box and nobody dared get in his way. Players sometimes stepped aside for him, just as they did for
El Fantasma,
but this was because Alberto was built like a
bull.
I used to think he charged in all the time because he was too ashamed to call out for the ball. You would expect a kid our age to squeak a bit, but Alberto had it bad. For a boy who looked like he should growl and grumble, it could come as quite a shock.

‘So what if my
huevas
haven't dropped yet?' he once piped up. ‘What matters is they're made of steel!'

We had a lot in common, Alberto and I. We grew up in the same
barrio,
and lived to support the same team. We could never afford to see Nacional play, but that didn't stop us spending every home game in the shadow of the
Atanasio Girardot.
I have never been inside this stadium, just as I have yet to travel beyond the city limits, but I often dreamed about what it must be like. We would bring a football with us, of course, and knock it around on the concrete as if the crowd in there were roaring for us.

We always made sure we were on the same side, too. If I was picking a team, Alberto would be my first selection and me his. No question. Unlike most kids, however, we didn't belong to a gang. In Alberto's opinion, that kind of thing was for cowards who couldn't fight for themselves.

‘Never rely on other people if you want to get on in this life,' he told me once, which was easy for him to say. Despite the difference in our size, we thought of each other as blood-brothers. We just didn't have the scars on our palms to prove it. Often stuff went unsaid between us, but even though I only came up to his chest we
always
saw eye to eye. My best friend was a big baby, a big boy, and would've been a mountain of a man. He had a face that went wide when he grinned, and always had his hair pulled back in a fierce pigtail We took communion on the same day, and grew up listening to the same bootleg tapes. First Elvis rocked our world, but then Nirvana came into our lives. We listened to everything by them that we could lay our hands on, but privately I liked the quieter songs the best. I didn't like to admit this to Alberto. I worried that he might laugh and accuse me of being a sissy, even though the stuff they did with acoustic guitars had more power and force than anything else. If my father ever returned, I used to think to myself at night, he would look like Kurt Cobain.

Music, money, Jesus Christ and soccer: that's what made our world go round, and for me it hasn't stopped spinning.

On the streets and on the pitch, Alberto and I were a team. My friend was younger than me by two months, but he always led the way for me to follow. One week after he gave up on school, I decided to join him running cigarettes across the city. I was used to being picked on by my classmates because of my size, but without Alberto the taunts had quickly turned to serious threats, and so I decided to go. We got the work from a man called Galán who owned a general store opposite our block. Galán liked to make out he was an old style
contrabandista
who had laundered vast riches in his time. That he struggled to keep his shelves stocked made us think he was basically well connected with his imagination, but we let him have his moment as it paid us cash to burn.

‘This isn't just work I'm providing,' he crowed when he first took us on. ‘It's an education!'

I didn't like Galán much. He wore an aftershave that smelled like sugared almonds, always had one finger curled around a fat cigar and kept mentioning that he once served up party food for Pablo Escobar. What the boastful old goat seemed to forget was that anyone in this city who made a living in the Eighties and early Nineties probably did so thanks to the same man.

Most kids in this country know about history. We aren't told fairy tales at bedtime, simply because the real-life stories of courage, treachery, bloodshed, love and honour have so much more to offer. It helps that we have TV, too, even if a lot of stuff about our past is made in the USA.

Take the documentary I once saw about Escobar. It claimed that the billions of dollars he made trafficking cocaine cost our country its soul. Now, everyone accepts he was prepared to go to great lengths to protect his business interests, but all animals have a heart. That's how Alberto once put it, and he was right. Pablo loved Colombia with the same passion that he loved his family, and Medellín was his home. Without him, thousands of people would have no roof over their heads, no hospice beds or nurseries, so I can understand why many still weep at his grave.

Alberto and I couldn't hope to remember the day he finally got cut down, but the stories about him crossed into folklore. Maybe some of the truth got a little twisted along the way, but then he was a complicated man from a complicated place. You only have to consider our politics to see that we're screwed. The old folk who spend their days playing chess in the park? They know about these things. Give them a chance and they'll quickly leave your head in a spin. They'll go way back fifty years and more, to a time when the two main parties conducted themselves with dignity, like rival teams on the pitch.

The conservatives and the liberals relied on reason and debate in their battle for control of the country, with no foul play. Then came the assassin's bullet, one with a popular leader's name on it. That marked the end of one era and the beginning of the next:
La Violencia
– in which our country turned against itself, and tore everything apart. Some say we have yet to recover from those ten savage years of uprising, strikes and guerrilla warfare. Sure, there were stabs at restoring calm, but then drugs became big business and that storm has yet to end. Those old guys who have lived through it all can tell you how cocaine caused the two sides to splinter into countless groups, but even
they
can't say what cause anyone is fighting for any more. Seems we've been at war with ourselves for so long that nobody knows the difference now between power and peace.

The only certainty is that the gun speaks louder than words.

Every day I hear the crack of a pistol, or get word of a kidnapping and ransom demand. Gangsters rule here, not government, though it's sometimes said that a lot of police and politicians are criminals who haven't come out yet. Medellín may be kind of wild around the fringes, but then it isn't a lawless place to live. If someone has done you wrong, there are ways and means of getting justice. Even if you can't afford it straight away, terms can be arranged.

There are plenty of good times to be had here as well, particularly on the pitch, and lately I've noticed that we have the most beautiful girls in the world.

Mountains also surround our city, and that can't fail to lift the spirits. From the roof of my apartment block, looking out over washing-lines and TV aerials, you get a clear view of forested slopes and gullies, even snow-caps sometimes. We spent a lot of time on that roof, Alberto and me. Nobody could touch us there, and we could only be seen from the sky. It's also where we hid the packs of cigarettes skimmed from Galán, and learned to smoke like soldiers.

‘Some day we'll get to the top,' Alberto once said to me, and flicked his dog end as if it might make it to the looming summit. ‘We'll steal ourselves some motorbikes and take ourselves all the way up there. I've always wondered what it looks like on the other side.'

The money we made from Galán wouldn't get us far. That miser always haggled with us whenever we returned with the goods, which was why we skimmed the smokes. Even so, we always accepted more runs from him. We were ten years old when we started out, and though he paid us peanuts it seemed a lot to boys like us. We weren't exactly made of money, after all. We came from EI Diamante in the southern quarter: a poor part of an impoverished city, but not the worst. Without work, we would've been forced out beyond the slums and the shanties, to the garbage heaps in the hills. My mother would've raged and wept at this, just as she did soon after
El Fantasma
found me, but I had to pay my way. That was the understanding, maybe not with her but certainly with Uncle Jairo. I've seen those skinny thieves up there, competing with the vultures for food and trinkets, and I realise how lucky I am. I earn some money, but a great deal more in respect.
Nobody
calls me Shorty outside of the compound, and our neighbours quit telling dirty lies about my mother some time ago. They know what I can do, and wisely they leave us in peace.

Without Alberto, most probably I would be picking through the trash already. I may not play by the same tactics as my friend: on or off the soccer pitch, I don't run with the ball until someone takes me down, but I
have
learned to make my mark. Sure, he had some weight to throw around, but it doesn't matter how you shape up on the outside. It's courage that counts, and Alberto brought that out in me when we decided Galán should pay for ripping us off.

‘The sonofabitch treats us like kids,' he moaned, and spat on the ground between his feet.

‘That's because we
are
kids, Alberto. Face it.'

‘But we're doing a man's job. Guys three times our age run cigarettes and get a bigger cut for it. Why should we settle for coins? It isn't right! We should show him, Sonny. We should make him pay. If we don't get the respect, soon everyone will treat us like bitches.'

Alberto and I had always steered clear of trouble. We left that kind of thing to the rival gangs, let them square up to each other while we got on with living. Now my friend had landed me with little choice. I didn't want him to think I was a coward, just as I hated the idea that Galán might be laughing behind our backs. The plan we cooked up seemed like a quick and simple way to save face. I wasn't going in alone, after all. Alberto would be with me every step of the way.

You should've seen the pair of us, crossing to his store with our shoulders squared and faces set. I closed in on the door first, mainly to hide the fact that Alberto was clutching a baseball bat. He told me he had borrowed it from a neighbour in our block. I figured that meant he had stolen it, and was lucky not to have been caught. In this city, a bat was for protection only.

‘Are you sure about this, Alberto?'

‘Keep moving, man,' I heard him hiss, sounding supercharged. ‘Don't stop now.'

We were here to do business, not run stupid errands, and if Galán didn't see reason then we would make a mess of his store. Privately I didn't think it would come to that. I figured he might even admire us for standing up for ourselves, and agree to the wage we deserved.

What we hadn't considered was that Galán would have company: some skinny guy with his hood up and his back to us, facing him across the counter. It was cooler inside, out of the sun, but it didn't stop my skin from prickling. The
contrabandista
looked up at me without moving a muscle, which seemed odd and even alarming. Then I saw that the skinny guy was holding a switchblade to the soft part of Galán's throat, and I froze just like him.

One glimpse of the blade and I pulled up, almost backtracked. We'd walked into a robbery, but as the skinny guy was across at the counter we had a chance to walk right out again. I was about to spin on my heels, but the door I had just pushed open hit the stopper with a bang. The guy twisted around at the waist: pasty-faced inside that hood, with eyes that darted between us.

‘Scram!'
For a moment, he snatched the knife away and showed it to us. I thought the storekeeper might come over the counter at him, but his gaze just followed the blade back to his throat. ‘Go home, little boys.'

We were nothing to him. Two kids come in for provisions, sent here by our mothers most probably. That's how it must've seemed, which gave Alberto a big advantage when he shoved me aside, already bringing the bat around with both hands …
whump!
The guy took the hit in the stomach, and almost folded over. His head appeared to pop out of his hood, a look of shock and horror in his face, while the breath left his lungs in an awful bark. Alberto snapped the bat away and he just crumpled. It was his jaw that took the full force of a second blow – this time from an upswing. His head snapped back too far, spittle flying high, but Alberto hadn't finished. As the guy went down, he began to kick and stomp on him as if this was a fire that had to be put out.

‘
Enough,
stop now!'

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere. I barely recognised it as my own, but somehow it got through to my friend. Alberto stood back, panting, and the bat just dropped from his hand. Galán remained frozen behind the counter, staring wide-eyed at Alberto – this express train that had come through his door.

‘Mother of Christ,' he breathed, ‘what have you done?'

The guy on the tiles was making an unholy mewling noise now. Even when he seemed to run out of air it just went on and on. His head was half turned inside the hood, and the side of his face that I could see was bloody and out of shape. He was sprawled on his back with one arm flung backwards, the blade resting uselessly in the palm of his hand. For a moment I thought he was trying to say something. I saw his lips part, and that's when I found his line of sight. I could've been looking at one of the fish we used to land, all the life left in it sealed inside one eye. He was easily into his twenties but seemed younger than me just then: nothing more than a terrified little street punk who didn't want any of this. Then the noise he was making trailed away and I watched his gaze fall slack.

I couldn't blink. I couldn't speak or breathe. I just stood there with my hand across my mouth, wishing we had never come into the goddamn store. Minutes earlier, we had stood in the alley round the back, pumping ourselves up, but not for this. Outside, people went about their business. The sun was shining, and swifts could be heard twittering from the telegraph wires. The
barrio
was always a busy place, and nothing had changed that now. The only difference was how still and silent it was here in the store.