Crache (23 page)

“In other words you’re saying that BEAN arrested him to get L. Mariachi to open up?”

“It’s a dell-wocumented interrogation strategy.”

Fola looks up from the bio. “Dell-wocumented?”

The datahound nods. “One that’s proven to be effective with some prisoners.”

She searches the IA’s face, but can’t find any sign of a flicker.

“I always wanted to play an instrument,” Pedrowski says, hefting the guitar with both hands.

L. Mariachi picks at his teeth with one thumbnail. “No shit?”

“Sure. The guitar, possibly the violin. I just never had time to learn.” Pedrowski pauses for a moment to breathe, then pops his question. “Do you think you could give me a lesson?”

The guy is pathetic—totally lame. It’s embarrassing. Even Fola can see through his false pretenses.

“Maybe later.” L. Mariachi yawns, then curls up on his side on the floor. “Right now I’m dead tired.”

Dead.

Fola swallows at the word the way she would moldy bread. She has to do something to get him out of there. Free him from BEAN before they shove toothpicks under his fingernails or give his testicles electroshock therapy.

Or before he does something just as terrible to himself. Jams a wadded-up scrap of shirt down his throat or strangles himself with one of his pant legs.

She’s seen people like this in refugee camps. For some, there’s only one means of escape.

28

JAILBIRD

C
urled up on his side, breathing the caustic grime of chemical-eroded concrete, L. Mariachi prays for sleep and replays the last time the Blue Lady saved his life. . . .

It was at night, in an abandoned warehouse where he had taken refuge after saying
sola vaya
to the Necrofeels. He’d hooked up with them a few weeks after arriving in Mexico City. After eight months as a member, he’d had enough of those
cabrones
. Stealing and rustling for a black-market pharm was one thing. Becoming a
maricon
was another. He might only be nine, ten in a few months, but he had his self-respect. He had taken that, if nothing else, from the shelter in Juárez.

Outside, the distended underbelly of a spent hurricane sweated fitful rain. Water drooled through cracks in the vomit yellow skylights, ran down the lichenboard walls to the concrete floor where it collected in puddles as black as the tears from Bloody Mary. There were no umbrella palms in this part of the barrio. No circuitrees to provide power. Rumor had it the place was a hazmat zone, too polluted after the ecocaust to support any kind of municipal ecotecture. At one point, in a failed attempt to make the building functional, someone had put up piezoelectric panels and strung heat-reflective mesh under the skylights. Now the mesh hung in tattered skeins. To stay dry he’d built a makeshift lean-to out of several panels that had sloughed off the walls and fallen to the floor.

It was late, after eleven. He hadn’t been able to scrounge any leftovers from the w@ngs noodle joint five blocks away, where the warehouse zone gave way to fast food, tri-X hotels, and a dance club called the Seraphemme where he liked to sit on the curb and listen to the music. Tonight it was too wet. He huddled under his lean-to, restless, kept awake by hunger pangs. Every few minutes, just as he was about to doze off, his stomach snarled. A slavering growl that kept sleep at bay.

Lucky for him. Hunger made a good watchdog.

The hunters showed up just after midnight. They packed compressed-gas assault rifles and straddled knockoff copies of pre-ecocaust Harleys, built in China, that ran on corn oil. In any other part of the
ciudad,
on any other night, he might not have smelled them coming. But there wasn’t a MacWendy’s within miles, or any other franchise that had fries on the menu.

They were cruising for street kids, loners like him without protection. Pure sport. They’d take him out without a second thought. They had zero compunction about wasting his ass. They were performing a public service. Probably had the tacit blessing of the local police and politicorp security, as well as business owners and residents who turned a blind eye and made the sign of the cross to ward off gang bangers and independent street rats like him. For anonymity and maximum effect, the
gabachos
wore masks. Day of the Dead
calaveras
, Egyptian mummies, old cartoon characters, and ghost white hoods with fiery red crosses emblazoned on the forehead.

As fate would have it the motherfuckers also wore infrared shades. The deck was definitely stacked, and not in his favor. The only thing he had going for him was a bad case of stomach cramps.

His mouth dry, he watched the
gabachos
converge on the warehouse. He was trapped. No way he was going to sneak out without being seen. His only hope was to become invisible, to disappear into the background noise of the universe and become one with all of the other nameless and faceless indigents who never registered as a blip on the radar of upper-clade consciousness.

“Yemana,” he whispered, saying the true name of the Blue Lady under his breath. “Help me.
Por favor
.”

Beams from the headlights of the Chinese hogs splashed through the bottom rows of warehouse windows. The lights stayed on, a poisonous glare. Shadows leaped to life around him, including his own. He wanted to pull it back into himself. Or fold it up into something small, handkerchief sized, that he could cram into one of his pants pockets. Anything to make it go away, get rid of the long figure it cast on the floor and unfurled across the wall.

A blue halo winked in the semidarkness above him. It beckoned him out of the glare, into the gloom clotted between the skylights. The
gabachos
were close. Their shadows flitted through the windows, preceding them like undead minions. Laughter followed, raucous, confident. They made no attempt at stealth.

He scurried to the back of the warehouse. In one corner a steel ladder attached to the wall led to the catwalk and joists under the skylights.

The ladder was beyond his reach. Even when he jumped, his fingers fell short of the lowest rung, scraping futilely against smooth concrete. Outside, one of the
gabachos
shook the rollup door. The deafening rattle jarred his nerves. To secure the rollup, he’d slipped a twisted length of wire through the hasp. The door convulsed again and let out a groan.

He hurried back to the lean-to, retrieved one of the piezo panels, and propped it at an angle against the wall beneath the ladder. The rollup bucked with a shrill squeal, and a gap opened up, revealing metal-studded black leather boots and the white-hot flare of headlights.

Taking a few steps back, he ran up the makeshift ramp. It slid out from under him, dumping him to the floor.

The rollup screeched. The gap widened. Almost large enough for a man to crawl under.

“Anyone in there?” The voice boomed.

He replaced the panel, adjusted the angle, and charged up it again. The panel slid just as his toes caught the top edge. But his fingers brushed the rung, curled around it as the panel clattered to the floor. The wire securing the latch gave way with a deafening pop.

Fast up the ladder. Light rose like tidewater to catch him as the rollup grated open in grudging increments. There was no place to hide on the catwalk. He could see through the grating to where the
gabachos
stood. That meant they could see him. He looked for the halo. It was gone.

“Come on out,” the voice said. “We won’t hurt you. We’re here to help. Got us some w@ngs if you’re hungry.”

He took a step. Froze as the catwalk creaked.

“You like pad Thai?”

He could smell the noodles. He hugged his stomach, squelched the sudden churn.

“We know you’re here,” the man said. He was huge. A beached whale with legs. He wore a cowboy hat and a coil of rope looped around his flabby neck.

A flashlight beam, phosphor bright, detonated like a land mine on the floor twenty meters below. He caught a glimpse of blue, half a meter in front of him, just as he closed his eyes against the incandescence and dropped to his knees.

“Please,” he prayed under his breath. “Protect me. Save me.”

Afraid to breathe, half-blind, his vision squirming with blood red afterimages, he crept forward. The metal grating dug into his elbows, scoring bone.

“You see anything?” a second
gabacho
said.

“Naw. Turn off them goddamned lights. They’re fucking with the IR. I can’t get a positive read.”

The warehouse went dark. The heat from the lights evaporated, left him shivering, covered with goose pimples. His jaw clenched.

“Anything yet?”

“Maybe. Hold yer pecker. Okay, it’s startin’ to clear.”

His hand brushed against a rough piece of cloth. Not cloth. Heat-reflective mesh that had fallen to the catwalk. He squirmed onto the lamé, pulled his elbows and knees to his chest, and waited.

“Well?” the blubbery
gabacho
said.

“Nothing.”

“Bullsheet. Anyone else see anything?”

Murmurs.

“Where the hell’d the rat go?”

“Maybe he wasn’t never here.”

“Well, fuck me to tears.”

The
gabacho
opened up with his AK. It huffed like a muffled air compressor. Whooping, the others joined in.

They aimed toward the ceiling, firing randomly, insatiably. Bullets and flechette needles ricocheted off the catwalk and support joists, tore into the decrepit cellulose of the skylights. Sparks twinkled around him, hot enough to bring tears to his eyes.

He waited for the sting of a flechette, or the bone-crunching impact of an AK round. It never came. The torrent died. The
gabachos,
after much back slapping and sweaty, adrenaline-amped howls, remounted their hogs and rode off, leaving him untouched.

When L. Mariachi wakes, Pedrowski is gone. Ditto the guitar. Except for Insect Aside, Fertile Liza, and a restless animal hunger pacing just at the edges of consciousness, he’s alone.

He refuses to look at his ink-splotch companions, afraid they’ll enter his thoughts through his eyes. To maintain his sanity he turns his back on them. But his refusal to acknowledge their presence only heightens the burden of their tireless gaze—the real or imagined bitcams that peer out of their chemical deformities.

So he doesn’t move. He stares at the drain, into the black hole that tunnels out of this world into some distant part of the universe, and wonders how to make himself little enough, or the right shape, to fit into the drain—to come out someplace else, someplace new, a different man. Changed. Remade, the same way he’d been after that night in the warehouse.

He’s waiting for the Blue Lady.

What he gets instead is the miniature parrot from the healing ceremony. The beak appears first, groping its way out of the drain. Nudging its way from darkness into light. Feathers plastered to a puppetlike body, slimed with the gelatinous sludge of partly composted chemicals, feces, and piss.

L. Mariachi scoots away, but keeps his body between Insect Aside and the parrot, shielding the bird from view.

The parrot wriggles and squirms, using its wings and feet to work its way upward. As soon as its head nears the opening, the parrot hooks its sturdy beak over the edge and hauls itself up and out. Disgorged, it spreads its wings and waddles around, unsteady on curled toes.

As the feathers dry, dust forms on them, a residue of ash gray particulates. The bird preens itself, ignoring him while it makes itself presentable. After extensive fluffing, the tiny parrot cocks its head, fixing him with one critical eye.

“Well?” it says in a nasal squawk. “Have you had enough?”

“Of what?”

The bird cocks its head sideways, looks around the room. “This shithole. Being held for no reason.”

“Not yet. I could stand to lose a few more pounds.”

The bird chortles. “Very funny.”

“So which agent are you?”

The bird extends its wings, fans its tail feathers, but the layer of dust remains intact, as if it’s held in place by static cling. “What? You don’t recognize me? After all these years?” The bird flaps onto his forearm, pinches the skin as it fights to keep from toppling off. “Sorry,” it says when it gets settled. “These wings take some getting used to.”

“I’ll send you a get-well card as soon as I get out of here.”

“When would you like to leave?”

L. Mariachi jerks his wrist, hoping to dislodge the bird. But all he gets is a bunch of nasty scratches and welts destined for infection. Up close the feathers grab his attention. They aren’t really feathers, more like blue plastic fibers, or filaments, coated with soot. The tip of one wing fans his face, brushes his cheek. The fibers are soft, too flexible to support much weight. The toy wasn’t designed to fly. All it can hope to do is hop around, listen, and make wisecracks.

As if on cue, the bird says, “I have a message.”

“Go to hell.”

The parrot raises a cupped foot to one ear. “What’s that?”

“My answer.”

“But you haven’t heard the message yet.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nothing the BEAN agent says will make any difference. He’s already told them everything.

“It’s from Yemana,” the parrot says.

The floor seems to tilt. L. Mariachi wobbles on his knees, reaches for the floor to steady himself.

The parrot nips him on the nose. Not enough to break the skin. But the pain props up his rubbery knees. “Do you want to hear it?” the bird says.

No. He doesn’t want to hear anything—doesn’t want to know that that part of his life is no longer his own.

The parrot hops from his arm to his shoulder, then prods his ear with a worm-fat tongue. “Trust me,” it whispers.

“That’s it?”

“For now.”

L. Mariachi laughs. Great, more of BEAN’s mind-fuck tactics. Well, the joke’s on them.

“What have you got to lose?” the parrot chides, lavishing an inordinate amount of attention on an itch or other irritation on one of its gray ankles.

“If you’re not with BEAN, why haven’t they shown up yet?” Surely the agents would have barged in by now, demanding to know how the bird got in and what it’s up to.

The bird nibbles the cuff of his ear. Swat it, and he’s going to end up looking like van Gogh.

“They don’t know I’m here,” it says.

“No shit?”

The parrot leans forward and winks. “It’s true. For all practical purposes, I’m invisible. Like Doña Celia. I exist, and I don’t.” The bird takes a step back and latches on to his ear again.

L. Mariachi rubs his face with both hands. The smart thing would be to wring the bird’s neck. Stuff it back down the drain where it can get composted like any other piece of garbage. Trouble is, it’s still got him in a beak hold, and he gets the impression that it is
not
going to stop twisting his ear anytime soon.

Fuck it. It’s time he put an end to his misery, one way or another. If he’s lucky, it will be quick—a bullet through the back of the head. The timeworn but trusted method for paramilitaries everywhere to dispatch insolence and avoid possible legal entanglement with the UN, APES, or Amnesty International.

“What do you want?”

“Hold still.”

“Should I close my eyes, too?”

“If you want.”

Whatever, as long as it doesn’t hurt too much. The parrot crawls onto the back of his neck, grabs a beakful of hair.

“This might be a little uncomfortable,” the bird warns, this time over his cochlear imp, sounding for all the world like his IA.