The suitcase was opened and the dollars were there. Sixty thousand.
Juan started to count them, greedily. The scene was disgusting. He took apart the bundles of money, methodically piling the bills, all the time wetting his fingers with saliva, as if feasting on delicacies.
Ramirez looked at me with satisfaction. His hair, flattened and rebellious, now seemed like an old, useless brush.
Sit down. Want something to drink, Porco?
I thanked him.
Funny thing, he said, I forgot your name.
You can go on calling me Porco, I said.
Porco, of course. Now that we trust each other, Porco, we can grow our business.
We smiled.
We were in the kitchen of his laboratory in Puerto Suárez. Ramirez said that Corumbá was only the route for cocaine coming from Bolivia and that all the Colombian drugs entered Brazil through Paraguay. We can grow your business, he repeated, adding that now they had a partner in Paraguay and needed someone like me to get the drug into Brazil. I don’t need mules, he said. I need brains. It’s a great deal for you; extradition from Paraguay is real complicated. I can guarantee there ain’t no risks.
I wasn’t the least bit interested in what Ramirez was saying, and he went on talking and I went on reading the newspaper I’d brought with me, where there was an item saying that Junior’s body had been found. The official version was that a farmer had noticed a strange smell on his land and had discovered the cadaver in a thicket. The police “believed” that Junior had left the airplane, wounded, and had died trying to find help.
I continued reading the paper, and Ramirez wouldn’t shut up. Out of every ten words, one was Porco. Porco chum. Porco friend. I ran my eyes over the other headlines. “Covered in a burka, Afghan woman displays her dirty finger after voting.” Goddamn, I thought, I’ve never seen so many ugly words together. Burka. Dirty finger.
It’s all there, said Juan, who had finished counting the money.
Before I left, Ramirez put his hand on my shoulder and asked me to think about his offer. He also said it hadn’t been him who killed Moacir. I found out he really did kill himself, he said.
It’s sad, he said. The truth is, Porco, that good people always end up dying.
Now, I thought on my way back to Corumbá, I don’t have anybody on my neck. Free, over.