Boy Kills Man (3 page)

‘Is he dead?' This was Alberto. He sounded all slowed down, like a tape-player running on old batteries.

‘He will be.' Galán reached for the telephone on the shelf behind him and dialed out a number from memory. With the receiver lodged between his shoulder and his ear, he turned to the drawer under his cash register and drew out a large cigar. Just like that. Not even a glance back at the body on his floor.

‘What now?' I asked, trying hard not to let my legs give way. I felt sick, as if I had just breathed in something evil.

‘What do you think, “what now”?' Galán paused to fire up his cigar. ‘What now is this prick goes to Hell.' He broke off there, greeted whoever it was who'd picked up the call. The way he turned away with the receiver, I realised it was meant to be private. I Iooked at Alberto. He was still just standing there, struck dumb it seemed to me. I reached out and touched his arm.

‘It'll be all right, man.' I said weakly, and cleared my throat before trying again. ‘Everything will be good again.'

‘Hey, fellas!' Galán broke off from his call, sounding cross with us all of a sudden. ‘Will you move him into the back room? C'mon, what are you waiting for?'

Obediently, Alberto dipped down and grabbed the guy by his ankles. I had no idea what was going through his mind. I was just glad to see him moving. I took his wrists and together we hauled the body across the tiles. Galán continued to chatter on the phone. As we reached the door behind the counter he cut us a frown. It was as if we were dealing with a sack of rotten watermelons here, messing up the tiles. I looked straight ahead all the way through, hoping and praying that this terrible weight between us wouldn't suddenly twitch or make any more noise.

Later, when the flatbed truck pulled up outside the store, followed by a silver 4×4
,
I would hope and pray that he really
was
as dead as can be. Galán had hurried us from the building just as soon as the body and the bat were out of sight. As we left he kept saying that we should go home and tell no one.

‘This didn't happen,' was his final word to us, and at the time I almost believed him.

Leaving the store was like waking from a bad dream. The air seemed so fresh that Alberto and I just stood in the street for a beat and breathed. We both turned with a start when Galán shot the bolt across the door. He flattened his lips at us, there behind the glass, and then flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

We didn't go home, of course. We took the fire-stairs round the back of our building, and headed straight for the roof. There, we sat against the old extractor hood and smoked some cigarettes. Every now and then, one of us broke the silence with a cough or a muttered
‘mierda,'
but we never looked at each other for more than a moment. I didn't want to see what was going on behind Alberto's eyes, and I was scared for him to see into mine. We only stirred when the truck turned up with the big jeep behind it, and that's when it seemed very real. Peeking over the parapet, we saw two brawny guys climb out of the flatbed and haul a tarpaulin roll off the back. They could've been anyone, a couple of rough hands like almost every other migrant in this
barrio,
but the man from the 4×4 didn't fit. He was wearing a light suit, white sneakers and shades, and moved like someone who didn't like to dwell too long in one place. I was sure he was going to peel off those glasses and look directly up at us. Instead, the two goons carried the tarpaulin into the alley beside the store and the man followed behind. A side door opened up and we watched him hustle them in, looking left and then right before disappearing from sight.

‘Galán wasn't lying,' Alberto whispered, as if he might be heard even from here. ‘He really is connected after all.'

There are two types of people in this city: the poor who scratch a living on street level, and those who have turned to the underworld to survive. Not everyone does so willingly, of course. For every drug don there are dozens of everyday citizens who have decided that it's better to accept a bribe than see their loved ones go missing. The cops and the judges may be decent people at heart, but with that kind of choice it's no wonder so many take the money. Most of the time you can't tell who has links and who needs some.

We always thought Galán was a bullshitter until he made that call, but it seemed Alberto was right. You only had to look at the party who came to collect the body to know where they had come from. These guys were
gangsters.
Not just street hoods grouped together for safety, but the kind who pulled all the strings in this city. Watching them leave the store from the front, with that tarpaulin roll looking a little heavier now, I felt both terror and awe. They left as quickly as they had arrived, with no fuss or fanfare. Galán waited for the silver jeep to pull away after the flatbed, and then flipped the store sign to show that he was back in business.

The events of that afternoon went down deep for us both. It became a part of who we were. We never once relived what had happened in that store, and I didn't ask my friend how it felt to kill a man. I figured it was probably the same for him as it was for me: something that we couldn't talk about because neither of us knew where to start. At first we spent a lot of the time not saying very much at all, just hanging out together, but as each day passed we found our tongues again. When our money ran short we even went back to the store. What's more, Galán began to pay us the extra we had wanted for every carton of cigarettes delivered. He even trusted us with unmarked packages and packets, and stopped shooing us away whenever the phone rang. A few weeks later, it became clear that he had spoken highly of us both. For that's how
El Fantasma
came into our lives.

I had never heard of the man when Alberto mentioned his name. Even so, it was clear by his gift to my friend that he had influence and power.

‘What do you think of me now, eh?' Alberto was standing square to me on the roof, as if preparing for a showdown. ‘Isn't she something?'

‘It's a gun,' I stated, half laughing.' It isn't real though, is it?'

Alberto stood down, invited me over for a closer look. It was black, silver and stubby. A semi-automatic, I knew that much. I had seen gang members make it obvious when they were carrying, and on instinct I always stayed clear. I was never scared, just cautious, but now here I was up on the roof with my very best friend. I just couldn't keep my distance from him, even with this weapon between us.

‘Take a look at her,' he said, again like it was a girl, and showed me the magazine. I got a glimpse of the bullets racked up inside before he slammed it back into the grip. He seemed very confident, as if someone had shown him how to handle himself. ‘She's a Smith and Wesson,' he told me. ‘A real beauty.' I watched him weigh the pistol in his palm, wondering where this woman talk had come from. Then his fingers curled around the grip and trigger, and I found myself directly in his line of sight. ‘On your knees, now.'

I looked up smartly, grinning because Alberto's voice had cracked when he said this, and a cry died in my throat. He was pointing the gun right at me, not finding this funny at all. His eyes narrowed into slits, only to finish it as suddenly as it had started by cocking his elbow so the gun was out of my face. I breathed out and thought I would never stop.

‘Jesus, Sonny.' Alberto melted into a loopy grin. ‘You just messed your pants!'

‘No, I did not!' My knees felt like curls of butter, but I also felt stung and that kept me on my feet. Alberto was my friend and friends did
not
pull stunts like this. ‘What's going on, brother? Where did you get the money for a goddamn gun?'

‘Didn't cost me a single peso.' He reached for his back pocket now, pulled out five ten-dollar bills. ‘This guy paid me to look after it for him.'

‘In dollars? No way!' I was beginning to get that sick feeling in the pit of my guts once more. American currency wasn't supposed to be good here. You couldn't spend it in the shopping malls, but then it bought you a lot on the streets. Everyone knew how it had come into the country, of course, which is why it was also worth a great deal in respect. ‘Come on,' I pressed him again. ‘What fool was dumb enough to tool you up?'

Alberto gestured over the edge of the building, to the store on the opposite side of the street. We were supposed to work as a team for Galán. I had never been in there alone, and when I thought about what he meant I felt a bit betrayed.

‘Our infamous
contrabandista
called me over this morning,' he explained. ‘Said an associate would be visiting him in the hour who wanted to talk to me'

‘And give you a loaded piece,' I cut in. ‘A kid like you, just like that? C'mon!'

‘I swear it on my life, Sonny! I feel like a
bandido,
man. The real deal.'

I frowned, wishing he would wise up, but still couldn't help thinking he should've waited for me. I had been helping Uncle Jairo all morning, acting like his second walking stick while we shopped for groceries. Alberto didn't have the same kind of ties. His mother pretty much lived in the textile factory where she worked several shifts from dawn to dusk, while his sister spent her days at college. He never really talked about any other family, but then I was only interested in the one I sometimes saw clutching text books to her breast.

Beatriz was sixteen, four years older than Alberto and the family's shining star. She had the brains where he had the brawn, and everyone said that one day she would be a doctor. Their father passed away many years earlier. His death had been slow and certain, a cancer of the blood that reached his liver. He had insisted that Beatriz did not abandon her studies for him, and so it fell upon her little brother to nurse him during the day so his mother could continue to provide. It meant the two of them were confined to a house that felt more like a waiting-room. With time on their hands, Alberto's father chose to fill it by schooling him in something, even if it was just stories.

In particular, Alberto loved to hear about the
bandidos,
and I wasn't surprised that the gun had reminded him of them. These were outlaws who had become folk heroes – men such as Sangranegra, Desquite and Guadalupe Salcedo – all of whom had earned their reputation during
La Violencia.
Each commanded a band of thieves – ruthless renegades who ran rings around what was left of the establishment and stole a place in the hearts of the poor. As his father's end drew near, however, Alberto confided in me that he was beginning to suspect some of the tales he heard seemed so rich in feeling and finish that they had to be confessions. I told him, don't be dumb. His papa would've been a kid our age when these guys roamed the hills, but Alberto seemed to cling to the belief that he was the son of someone very special.

My mother once told me this had been Alberto's way of coping with the loss when it finally came, so I never raised the subject again. I figured he'd grown out of it, but now I saw how alive he looked with a gun in his hand. It was as if he had found his calling somehow, a chance to follow in his father's footsteps – even though his old man had conjured up that path from his deathbed.

‘Alberto,' I said finally, and waited until I had his full attention. ‘Do you know what you're getting into here? This isn't like the old days. We don't have heroes any more, apart from on the pitch.'

‘Listen to you,
Senor
Sensible.'

‘I just can't believe some guy paid you to take his gun.'

‘Why not? He didn't ask me to use it. I'm just minding it for him, I guess.'

‘Why couldn't he stash it, same as any gangster?'

‘Who says he's a gangster, and anyway what would
you
have done, huh? C'mon, Sonny, I didn't have much choice. I showed up at Galán's like I'd been told, got shown into the back room and there he was. Sitting at the table with a coffee and the early edition of
El Colombiano.
I was only in there for a minute or so. He asked if I wanted to make some easy money, and just came right out with the gun before I could answer. He told me all I had to do was prove I could be trusted to look after it. I couldn't exactly walk away, but then I didn't have a problem with staying. I just see the fifty bucks he lays down next to the piece, already I'm thinking about how I can spend it.'

‘El Fantasma,'
I said to myself, chewing on the nickname. ‘What is he, some kind of spook?'

‘That's not our business,' Alberto said with a shrug, ‘but let me tell you, I never heard a man speak in such a whisper.'

The woman peered at us from behind the toughened glass. Alberto had just dropped the money into the hatch for her to draw through, but something stopped her from collecting it.

‘What's the matter?' he asked talking like a tough guy. ‘They're dollar bills. Dead presidents, every one of them.'

She held his gaze for a moment longer, then sighed and took the money. She gave us some funny looks still, along with a lot of pesos in spare change and two very precious tickets.

‘I cannot wait until next month!' Alberto practically danced away from the box office. He even kissed the foil-stitched slips before handing one to me. We were going to see Nacional for the very first time. It would be the opening fixture of the season. What's more, we were playing Medellín rivals, Independiente, which meant it would be more like a fiesta than a football match. If all the Feast Days could be rolled into one, and the saints were given a soccer ball to celebrate, this match would be it. The city would go
wild,
and I could not wait.

‘I'm not letting mine out of my sight,' I said, as we rattled down the steps outside the stadium.

‘Don't keep it in your hot little hand,' Alberto joked. ‘The ink might run.' He was wearing a money belt under his vest, and patted it now to show me where he had just put his own ticket for safekeeping. He had found the belt some weeks before, lying in the street. It was empty, of course, and the clasp had taken some fixing from where it had been ripped from the previous owner. I had told him anyone dumb enough to wear such a thing deserved to be robbed, and back then he'd agreed. Now he had been paid to carry a gun. Like the tickets he had just bought with the money, Alberto couldn't afford to let it out of his sight. Watching him fuss with the belt one more time, I figured it had gone to his head.