I didn’t want to go on feeling like that all the time. Hunted, a deer running in an open field. A rabbit in frightened flight. Ramirez couldn’t make another mistake. I always paid everything, I mean. I’m a reliable payer, one of those who can’t sleep when they owe something. A trait inherited from my mother, actually. That was our religion, to pay everything on time. Debt was a kind of sin in our house.
On the veranda of his factory in Puerto Suárez, Ramirez didn’t even look at me. He was more interested in his brand-new black Mitsubishi parked in the garage. Stolen probably, over. In the living room some people, maybe more swallowers of cocaine capsules, were talking with Juan.
Sulamita had told me that people line up for that kind of work and that at the precinct she’d seen women with bundles of drugs the size of a tennis ball in their pussy.
It’s not good business to kill me, over. You’re going to lose fifty grand. Lose a partner. I was there to say that, had come very early, without phoning, which didn’t sit well with them. I’m gonna give you a tip, Porco: we don’t like surprises around here, Juan had said. But I had to straighten out the situation. Make a pact with Ramirez. An oath. I swear it, I was going to say. My legs were shaking, I was panting like a dog and couldn’t get out even a sentence of the speech I had rehearsed in the car en route to Puerto Suárez. All I said was shit, lies, while hearing my internal radio, over, saying I was about to fuck myself up. I told him about Moacir and how he’d been found in his cell. And how he’d belched when they removed the sheet he had used to hang himself. The final sigh of the hanged, I said. If you’re strangled, I said, not understanding why I was going down that crooked road, you don’t belch. And you don’t ejaculate, isn’t that interesting? They told me Moacir had a hard-on when he was found. Covered in cum. And I laughed as if that was funny.
Porco says the damnedest things, said Ramirez. You running some angle?
Huh?
You got something special to tell me?
No, it’s that Moacir –
I don’t give a shit about Moacir, Ramirez interrupted. I’m going to pay, I said. You don’t have to worry about me. Ramirez guffawed.
I’m absolutely sure you’re going to pay, he replied.
Then he yelled to Juan, Bring me my notebook.
Juan left the house and returned a short time later with a large book with a black cover, the kind accountants used in the past.
That’s how these guys get screwed, I thought, by keeping spreadsheets like the CEO of a multinational. And now my name was there among all the other traffickers.
It’s written here, Ramirez said. Porco, sixty thousand dollars. You’re Porco, ain’t you?
Yes, I said.
Okay then, you already know.
You had said fifty, I ventured.
I did? And even so, you come here to jerk my chain? Now you know, it’s sixty, he said, making the change in the book.
He paused before adding the rest.
Every time you come to my house with bullshit, I’m adding ten thousand dollars to what you owe.
He added that I had twenty-four days to settle the debt. And that I ought to consider the grace period a goodwill gesture. I ain’t usually so generous.
Driving back to downtown Puerto Suárez, I was overcome by a sense of relief. After all, I had 24 days, over. Better than twenty-four hours. If Ramirez said twenty-four days, I had twenty-four days. Earlier, I’d had thirty, and now twenty-four. Which was fair, if you consider the size of the debt. Sixty grand. And ten kilos of cocaine.
I couldn’t stop thinking that this was how someone condemned to death must feel. Twenty-four days. His quota and then the electric chair. And kidney cancer too. The doctor says: six months. A deadline and it’s over. My advantage is that I had the reprieve, the antidote, right there in my pocket. Sulamita had prepared everything that morning: a small wooden box with Junior’s watch, to be mailed to the Berabas from there, Puerto Suárez.
Sulamita had carefully cleaned the watch, removing our fingerprints, and wrapped it in carbon paper, a technique to thwart X-rays.
We also took care to write the name of the recipient on a sticker printed on Sulamita’s computer and to use a fake return address. If they checked, they’d quickly see the street and the number didn’t exist.
I parked two blocks from the post office and walked, avoiding the puddles, over, feeling the volume of the package in the pocket of my jeans jacket.
Movement was heavy work. A luncheonette, trinket store, bank, another trinket store, bakery, yet another trinket store, all packed because of the rain, which was coming down harder now.
I hesitated in front of the post office, not knowing whether to go in or ask someone to do it for me. A kid, one of those who offers to carry tourists’ bags, could handle it. Don’t trust anyone, over. Then a group of American backpackers went into the agency, creating the kind of confusion typical of adolescents. I joined them and mailed the watch, not drawing much attention to myself.
Mission accomplished, I thought as I got into the car.