Surviving Santiago (29 page)

Rafael laughs. I shrink into a corner of the backseat, as far away from Rafael and his sour breath as I can.

“So how are my birds doing?” Papá asks.

Rafael leans forward, toward Papá in the front seat. “Plucking out their feathers. Both of them.” I turn from the stench. Does the guy brush his teeth when he wakes up?

“Víctor, too? I didn't think he cared about me.”

Rafael nods. “He started a day after the other one. Guess it's contagious.”

“He misses me.” Everyone stares at me. But when no one says anything, I go on, “He started talking to Frankie first. And then to me.”

“The bird's a
momio
. A traitor. And ungrateful,” Rafael says. “He'll make a nice stew.”

“No!” Papá and I shout together. Then Papá says, “He's my bird now, Rafa. You gave him up.”

As we approach the building, I think of the good times I had there—the video games and movies, hanging out with Frankie. Ernesto parks on the side street, where Frankie's motorcycle is still chained to a light pole behind the bushes. The four of us get out of the car. Rafael pats his hip—I know he has a holster and gun there. Ernesto taps his calf, and I try to tell from the looseness of his pant leg if he's hidden a gun or a knife. I carry a walkie-talkie
and the box of screwdrivers, Papá the keys. He leans on his cane.

At the door to the building, he hands me the keys. My hand trembles when I try both keys twice, finally get one into the lock, and turn the handle. Ernesto and Rafael stand guard downstairs while Papá and I take the elevator to the fourth floor. My knees bang against each other, and I press myself into one of the corners to keep them from buckling. Papá wedges himself into the other corner and taps his cane on the rubber floor to the rhythm of a popular chant,
Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap
, over and over as the elevator makes its slow climb.

I drop the keys before I unlock the door to the apartment. Frankie calls out, “Tío Jorge? You're early.”

His uncle? The leader of the gang?

We push through the door, me first and then Papá with his weak left hand clutching my shoulder. Frankie jumps up from the sofa and stumbles backward. He's barefoot and wearing only a white undershirt and jeans. Clothes are scattered all over the living room floor. Soda cans and crushed cigarette butts litter the coffee table. Next to the ashtray is his switchblade. I glimpse the Mass on TV, the Cardinal on the pulpit.

“Tina!” He blinks rapidly, then holds his arms outstretched. “Thank God, it's you.” The left side of his face is purple, the color of a birthmark, with a thick black ring under his eye.

“What happened to you?”

“I . . . fell. In the bathroom.”

I step forward, scoop up the knife, and drop it into the kangaroo pocket of my sweatshirt. Papá steps around me.

“Mr. Heider Villalobos, I believe we've met,” he says.

Frankie pushes himself against the built-in cabinet. His body covers the TV. He turns his gaze to me, then to his unlaced sneakers, everywhere but to my father. “Please don't hurt me, sir.”

I slide toward the entryway and lock the deadbolt. Frankie continues to beg for his life, even though Papá is unarmed except for his cane. Papá leans on the sofa and sets the cane on a cushion.

“Want to see what your comrades did?” Papá lifts his untucked shirt to reveal a thick, jagged purple line across his rib cage. A giant bruise darkens his lower back. His belly is swollen, with purple and black patches, and there's a square bandage above his navel. His entire midsection is battered even worse than Frankie's face.

Frankie's color drains, leaving only bruises. “I'm sorry, Mr. Aguilar.”

Papá lowers his voice to a growl. “Okay, fucker, here's the deal.” I suck in my breath. He was going to give Frankie
la dura
—the deal—but calling him a
culiao
was not in the script. “My daughter loves you. You love her. Right?”

Frankie nods.

“Look at me.”

Frankie raises his head to look into Papá's yellowed eyes and winces. He could be seeing his dying father's eyes in Papá's.

“Your face, kid?” Papá's tone softens.

“I fell,” Frankie says.

“No, you didn't.” Papá picks up his cane and raises it toward Frankie's head. Frankie cringes. “Someone pistol-whipped you.”

I gasp. “How do you know, Papá?”

My father ignores me. Still staring at Frankie, he asks. “Who did it?”

“I . . . I can't . . . tell.”

Papá raps the tip of his cane on the floor. Frankie jumps. “So you're going to protect the
culiao
who turned your face to a pulp?”

My fingers curl into fists. “We're trying to help you, Frankie. Like you asked me to.”

“Even though three broken ribs, liver and kidney damage”—Papá takes a shallow breath—“and some bad memories of a motorcycle and mountains haven't put me in a forgiving mood.” He turns toward me and flashes his crooked smile. Despite what he just said, it's the happiest I've seen him since I arrived a month ago.

After a long moment, Frankie says, “All right.”

Papá motions with his head. I step forward, one sweaty hand fingering the knife in my sweatshirt pocket, the other
holding the screwdrivers. “What's in the bedroom, Frankie?”

“Stuff,” Frankie mumbles.

“What kind of stuff?” I ask. “Guns?”

“Yeah.”

“Drugs?”

Frankie shakes his head this time. “The cocaine was given to someone else.”

“Like the punk cops that beat the shit out of me,” Papá says.

“I'd say that's a pretty good guess, Mr. Aguilar.” Frankie blows his breath through the space between his teeth, making a whistling sound.

Papá nods. “Anything else in there we might like to know about?”

Frankie lowers his head but doesn't answer.

I squeeze Frankie's bare upper arm. “We'll get you to safety if you tell us. Papá knows people in other countries.”

“Tapes,” Frankie whispers.

I hand him the box of screwdrivers. “Take off the lock.”

Papá calls on the walkie-talkie for Rafael to come upstairs and repost outside the door, to keep Frankie from trying anything with the screwdriver. I don't think Papá realizes I grabbed the switchblade. He lights a cigarette, takes a puff, and gags.

“You want it?” He hands the cigarette to Frankie.

Frankie inhales. “Thank you, sir.” Smoke comes out with his words.

Papá steps back. “Take the whole pack. They taste like rotting fish.”

After fifteen minutes and another cigarette, Frankie has the entire doorknob disassembled. We enter.

There is no bed. No night table. No dresser with old-lady clothes. Only a desk, with shelves and a chair behind it and several chairs in front. One shelf holds a reel-to-reel tape player, with about a dozen boxes of tapes on the shelf below.

“Are those the tapes you're talking about?” I ask Frankie.

“That's how he keeps track of assignments. He doesn't write down much.”

“Who?”

“My uncle.”

“Your own uncle beat you? The one you admire so much?” I ask. It must have been right before I called yesterday.

“Yes.” Frankie doesn't lift his gaze from the parquet floor.

I pull the boxes from the shelf. When I turn to set them on the desk, my father is holding a pistol, glancing from it to Frankie's face. I break into a sweat. “Put that down!”

My father starts to laugh. Then he stops, hands me the gun, and grabs his stomach, in obvious pain but still smiling. “Scared you, didn't I?” he rasps.

“Not funny,” I say.

“Worse than that,” Frankie says, unfolding himself from his fetal position under a chair. “Maybe you shouldn't listen to those tapes.”

Papá spits onto the floor. “Maybe I should.”

The pistol feels heavy. Its black grip is oily, and I have to hold it with both hands so I don't drop it. I point the barrel toward the floor.

Papá opens the desk drawers, one by one, pulls out a few papers, pens, a wad of cash, and passports. He counts eight passports, which he leafs through before stuffing them into the back pocket of his borrowed jeans.

“Pack up the evidence,” he orders. “And Mr. Heider Villalobos, get your clothes together. You're coming with us.”

“I am?”

“Don't be a
pendejo
,” Papá says. “You think I'm going to let these guys kill you? Look what they did already.”

“Thank you, sir.”

With his weak left hand Papá picks up a pen, twirls it back and forth. “When we take you, will anyone report you missing?”

Frankie blinks rapidly. “Probably not.”

He turns and leaves the room, and when he comes back with a duffel bag and wearing a threadbare sweater, his eyelids are red. Dirty clothes stick out of the bag. He drops a tissue onto the floor and with his sneaker wipes the spot where Papá spat. Half of the tissue turns green.

Frankie shakes his head and says, “Not good,” under his breath.

He goes into the bathroom. I follow, gun in my right hand. He sweeps his toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant,
shaving cream, and aftershave into the duffel but leaves behind the unopened box of condoms. In the office Papá examines the framed pictures on the wall, writing notes from time to time. I arrange the tapes in the duffel.

We wait for Papá to finish. He covers the tape boxes with papers, notes, documents, and one of the framed pictures. His gaze falls on the pistol, still in my hand. A shudder runs through him. He nods twice.

“Leave the gun,” he tells me. Then he takes another piece of paper from the drawer, grips the pen in his bruised fingers, and writes,

Romeo defected to the Capulets.

—Guillermo Shakespeare

C
HAPTER
29

O
n the way to the car, Ernesto and Rafael hold Frankie's arms. Papá shuffles behind them with me on his weak side as lookout. When no one's watching, I slide the switchblade out of my pocket and drop it through a street grate.

In the crowded backseat, I'm the buffer zone between Frankie and Rafael. I repeat to myself, “Guillermo Shakespeare,” as if it were a calming mantra, pronouncing the last name the Spanish way,
Shock-es-PEAR-ay
.

“Hey, Nino, what do you want me to do with the
facho
?” Rafael asks. I turn away from him—forty-five minutes standing guard haven't improved his breath. Slumped in his seat, Frankie hugs the duffel bag to his chest.

“Nothing. I'll take care of him.”

I can't wait to get out, with Rafael glaring at Frankie and me like we're a pair of stinkbugs, Frankie's dirty laundry right under my nose, and Rafael's holster and gun digging into my ribs every time we take a right turn. In the front seat, Papá leafs through a stack of papers. Nobody else says a word until Ernesto stops by
the radio station to pick up a reel-to-reel tape player. I'm the one who gets to hold it on my lap.

“We don't have much time,” Papá says. “Guns, drugs, other documents—whatever evidence they have they'll destroy.”

“But we can't go to the
carabineros
. Look what they did to you,” I say.

“Those two are gang members. Rogues. Their passports were in his uncle's collection. But you're right—I'm not sure who we can trust.” He glances up from the papers. “Ernesto.”

Ernesto keeps his gaze on the slow-moving Sunday morning traffic, people on their way to or from Mass. “Yes, boss.”

“I'm going live with the story tonight.”