Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (26 page)

“So you got out alive, huh?” Ramon says.

“What?”

“That 
Suerte
 joint, you got out alive. I almost bet against you. Now I’m glad I didn’t.”

“Someone was giving odds?”

“Sure man, eighty to one against you. I actually would have bet, but I didn’t have any money.”

I look for a sign that this is another joke, but it doesn’t seem to be. Big drops of rain begin to spatter the windshield, at first just a few, then suddenly a torrent of them. Ramon and I both roll up our windows.

“So, what? Everyone in 
El Paraíso
 knows I was in there?”

“Well, everyone knows some gringo’s coming and nobody’s supposed to fuck with him. The order comes from Suarez, so obviously everybody’s curious. Then Damita brought you here. You’re the only gringo showed up today. Then you come back out, but someone fucks with you anyway. Got to be Vicente, right? Because no one would touch you if he said not to except him or his people. Then, after they shock you and all that, you fucking go back 
in
 man. I thought that was it for sure. But no, here you are. Big mystery.”

“You’re really serious that no one would disobey Suarez? I mean not even the 
Chicahuaque
 or someone like that?”

“Hey, those guys are a little weird, you know, but they’re not crazy. I mean, maybe they’re crazy but they’re not suicidal or anything.”

“You believe all that 
Suerte y Muerte
 stuff, about stealing people’s luck and the rest of it.”

“Hey man I don’t know. Do I look like some scientist or a priest or whatever? I know my grandmother believes in Jesus Christ and some preacher cured her legs, so who fucking knows? All I know is I got vegetables, I sell them, I go home, mind my own business. Who needs to worry about stuff like that? They sure as hell kill people though. Everybody knows that. They don’t even hide it. I’ve seen one of them kill a guy right in the street, some gringo that was looking for some ass. Nobody’s going to stop a 
Suerte
, you know, so he’s not worried, just does it right back there, middle of the street. Used a knife man, fucking ugly.”

I watch the rain for a few moments.

“So someone stunned me and dragged me off in the middle of the neighborhood and no one did anything?”

He looks at me quickly, puzzled, then looks back at the road.

“What’d I just tell you? I figured it was the 
Suerte
. Everyone else figured the same thing. So who’s going to stop them?”

We’re entering a nicer neighborhood now. Small, clean shops and restaurants. People are standing in the doorways here and there, watching the rain.

“But the thing is, it wasn’t the 
Suerte
.”

Ramon looks surprised.

“Then they’re dead, my friend. I mean like already, right now. Suarez said don’t touch you.”

The woman has been dead for a while, but I don’t see any point in mentioning it to him. Now I suppose the men have been killed as well. I don’t relish the thought, but I can’t muster up a lot of sympathy either.

“You sure it wasn’t the 
Suerte
?” Ramon asks.

I think of the throwing knives, so accurate one moment, so blind to their target the next.

“Pretty sure.”

He whistles.

“That is fucked up man. Why would somebody do that?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

“Only thing is if they weren’t from Mexico, you know? Nobody from Mexico is going to screw around with Vicente.”

“They had Mexican accents.”

“Yeah?” he says, smiling broadly. “You can tell a Mexican accent from a Columbian accent? A Chilean accent?” He has a point. “Hell,” he says “for all you know they came down from L.A. on the same plane as you. Lots of Latinos up there, right? Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorans, whatever.”

“Yeah, it could have happened that way. How’d you know I came from L.A.?”

“That was the message: don’t do anything to the gringo from L.A. You got enemies up there might want you dead or whatever?”

An image of the ‘homeless’ assassins flashes through my mind, but I don’t answer.

“Hey, whatever. Just making conversation,” Ramon says when I don’t speak.

“Don’t take it personally.”

Suddenly he looks worried. Maybe I look pissed off, though in fact I’m just trying to work things out. Suarez treated me like an honored guest, so maybe pissing me off is bad karma.

“Don’t worry Ramon, I was just thinking, that’s all. Better you don’t know too much though, ok? Like you said, sell your vegetables, go home, live your life.”

“You got it man. I like to stay away from trouble. I mean, you don’t even have to pay for the ride, you know? Suarez says to treat you right so…”

“It’s ok. We have a deal… business. I don’t mind paying for the ride.”

Ramon looks relieved.

“Okay, cool. I could use the money, you know?”

“Going out on the town tonight?”

“Oh man, seventy pesos? You better believe it. Buy some girl a bunch of drinks, dance, you know? Might even get lucky.”

He has that huge, goofy, stoned smile on his face again. Looking out the window I realize we’re almost at the hotel.

“That girl? Damita?” I say.

“What about her?”

“You know her? I mean, you knew her name.”

“I seen her around. Everybody has, you know.”

“She going to be okay, you think?”

“What do you think man? She’s fourteen and she’s already pulling dates. Not like that’s rare in 
El Paraíso
. You really sure you want to know what will happen to her?”

“Yeah,” I say, not certain I mean it but unable to back down.

“If she’s lucky she’ll be pregnant before she’s sixteen and spend the rest of her life whoring or begging, or maybe even working, all to raise her kid. If it’s a boy, it’ll end up like me. If it’s a girl, it’ll end up like her.”

For the moment I say nothing about the fact that he’s drawn a parallel between Damita and his own mother, although silently I wonder how she supported him: whoring, begging, or working.

“And if she’s not lucky?”

“Then she’ll be dead before she’s sixteen and won’t have to worry about any kid. Girls get killed all the time. I mean, the 
Suerte
 won’t hurt her ‘cause she’s too unlucky, you know? What could they get from her? But guys get crazy, fucking lunatics come around sometimes. Mexicans, sometimes. Guys from California or Texas sometimes. They come down here just to get laid you know, so sometimes it’s one of them. Or from wherever. What’s up man, you feel bad for her?”

“Yeah, of course I feel bad for her.”

His good humor seems to desert him for a moment.

“You want to save her or something? There’s about half a million girls like her in the city man. I mean literally half a million. You going to save them all?”

“Can’t hurt to help one of them, you think?”

He seems to make a conscious effort to lighten his tone.

“Sure man, helping one is good I guess,” he says, sounding unconvinced.

Outside, as promised, the rain has slowed to a trickle and the sun is beginning to appear from behind the dissipating clouds. Suddenly Ramon’s face lights up.

“Hey, here’s the fucking doorman. He’s gonna hate this.”

We pull into the driveway of the Cordoba and sure enough the doorman steps forward, trying to wave us off. Ramon cackles and continues driving, only stopping once he’s directly in front of the main doors, where he revs the engine loudly a last time, then cuts it. The doorman is at the curb now, livid, yelling at us in Spanish. I lean out my window.

“I’m a guest here,” I say in English. The yelling stops immediately. Technically I’m not a guest yet since I haven’t actually checked in, but I intend to. I might not spend the night, but I at least want a shower before I get on a plane back to L.A.

“Certainly sir. It’s just… unusual. The truck. Most of our guests use taxis or come on the shuttle.”

“No taxis around at the time,” I tell him.

He tips his hat and returns to his post. Ramon laughs louder than ever, nearly choking.

“Oh man, fuck. That was great. That guy thinks he is king shit, you know. Wouldn’t have the time of day for a guy like me. Look at that stupid uniform. 
I’m a guest here
. I love that.”

I take out seventy pesos and hand the bills to him. I recall giving Damita her money. I can’t seem to get her out of my mind, come to a quick decision.

“Thanks man,” Ramon says.

“A deal’s a deal. Listen, about Damita. I’m going to talk to the doorman. On the first of every month I want you to drive out here and you can laugh at him all you want, okay? But he’s going to give you a hundred pesos. Thirty is for you, for gas. The rest, I want you to take it to Damita.”

He looks skeptical.

“Sure man. If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want. Tell her it’s from the gringo she took to the 
Suerte
. Tell her she’ll keep getting it as long as she doesn’t pull dates any more, all right? She can support her mother or her brothers or get a boyfriend or whatever, but you’re watching her and if she starts whoring around again then the money stops coming.”

“Hey man, no offence, but for thirty pesos a month I can’t watch her every day. I got to sell my vegetables, right?

I turn to him.

“You don’t actually have to watch her Ramon. Check in on her once in a while just so she thinks you are, that’s all.” I get out of the truck and lean in the open window.

“And if she starts again?” Ramon asks.

“Tell her to stop. Tell her that this 
one
 time you won’t tell me about it, but if you catch her again you’ll tell me and the money will stop.”

“That true?”

“No. Just lie, okay.”

He smiles brightly.

“Yeah whatever. Thirty pesos a month to drive out here and laugh at that asshole? You can count on it.”

“Thanks Ramon.”

I stand back. Ramon starts up the truck and waves. I wave back, then go to find the doorman. When I add in his cut the whole arrangement will probably cost me fifty bucks a month. Less than I spend on insurance for my bike, far less than my holo fees, less than a good dinner in L.A.

In the old days you used to be able to buy indulgences from the church and be forgiven for your sins, keep yourself out of hell. I don’t believe in buying your way out of blame, but if helping Damita gives me one less Tijuana dream a month—hell, one less per year—it will be worth it.

The shower in the Cordoba feels like distilled bliss. The sweat stuck to my body washes down the drain, and with it goes the funky stink I’ve developed over the last few hours, a combination of perspiration, adrenaline, and the odors of 
El Paraíso
.

Feeling refreshed, I decide to stay the night after all and lie down on the bed to try to sleep. It’s early evening outside and the sounds of the city come in through the open balcony door, the warm breeze making the curtains waft, casting shadows on the walls. I hear cars, animated voices, faint music from ten stories down.

I drift into a light doze and the room’s elements morph in my sleep. The bulging, shifting shadows transform themselves into Forces soldiers: shored up by Brace, faceless, fearless, godless, loveless. A woman’s voice from the street loses its happiness, rising in volume, then in intensity, then turns into a shriek. The light from the streetlamps and the nearby advertising holos turn the room a fantastic red—like fire, like blood—the color of fear.

The exhaust from cars outside becomes the wafting, bitter odor of Angelfire, of houses burning as lives and belongings go up in flames. The whole of Tijuana is full of smoke, filled with the smell of burning wood and burning meat: pigs, chickens, humans, horses. I hear laughter, but it isn’t the innocent laughter of the Mexico City street, the kind that lulled me to sleep. It’s a laughter with nothing inside at all. At its heart is the most frightening void there is—nothing human, nothing alive, nothing but the absence of life, nothing but the huge empty entropy of death soaking up everything around it. What scares me the most is that it comes from the throats of men, from the hearts of men. Not from some monster, some myth, it comes from us.

The woman’s shriek won’t stop, won’t stop, won’t stop. I’m in the middle of the action, standing in the street with people running everywhere—killing, dying, trying to escape, trying to fight back—but there’s nothing I can do. With the Brace in my system my conscience is disconnected from my body. Along with the others I burn, shoot, kick, cut, spit, while the real me, the one that cares, that loves, rides like an unwilling passenger inside the head of the monster I’ve become. I shout at my Braced self, commanding it to stop, but it won’t. I scream, scream again, more, louder. My voice mixes with the woman’s scream, becomes one with it.

Tijuana was a Deploy and Destroy. We used pure terror to crush the population back into docility—women and children first. There was no plan, as such. Just get down there and fuck them up. Lasers that can cut a man open and spill his guts into his own hands. Angelfire that clings to the skin and keeps burning right down to the bone, even under water. Airborne mines that float like jellyfish at head height, set off by the air currents created whenever some unlucky civilian strayed near. Hell, fucking garotte them if you want to. Get down to the 
old
 stuff. Bring a samurai sword, build a gallows, crucify. Whatever turns you on. Let your worst, blackest impulses run wild, the predatory animal that floats in the ancestral consciousness of every man.

We weren’t attacking the military because there was no military force opposing us—Guiterrez had the MXAF and other forces stand down so we could do our work—this was strictly population control. Leave no family untouched, no home undamaged. Break their bones, spirits, sanity. When we were finished, what was left of the population was back under control—deeply and sickeningly under control. They buried their dead, tended to their wounded and insane, and went back to their fields and factories

But in my dream, the battle never reaches its conclusion. It simply rolls on, ever and ever on, to the booming drumbeat of mortars and the high, pure note of a child’s scream—every child’s scream—a symphony of distilled sadism that has sucked us all inside of it, perpetrators and victims alike.