I left Paco on the steps of a crumbling chifa joint across the street from my apartment. He promised to watch me real good. I didn't have the heart to explain that "good" was not an adverb.

I climbed the rotting planks to my apartment. The stairs bowed and creaked underfoot, threatening to send me plummeting a.s.s first into the bas.e.m.e.nt beneath the butcher shop, impale me on who knew what subterranean delights lay hidden below.

The door was ajar.

No sign of damage. No scratches. No splintered or broken wood. But still, ajar.

I smiled and rubbed my crotch. Momentary distractions were always welcome. I was still hard from thinking about Janine. I put my keys in my pocket. "I told you not to come here, Lynn," I called out.

I opened the door. The room was dark. "Playing games, I see. You like it that way, don't you?"

I tripped over something on the floor and fell. I landed on an arm.

"Sorry, babe, I-"

But the arm bounced, fell back, lay still. I jumped up and flicked on the light.

It was Lynn. She lay naked on the floor. I bent down, laid a finger to her lips. Nothing. I touched her throat. No heartbeat.

"d.a.m.n you," I said. "d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l."

I pulled out my cell phone. The occasion seemed to demand it. Who would I call? The police? The American emba.s.sy? Ambo direct? Ambo, I decided. He would want to know first. He would know what to do. With any luck he might even kill me.

My fingers shook as I punched in the numbers, slid on the keys, misdialed. I cleared the screen and tried again. A flash of movement in the cracked wall mirror caught my eye. A heavy weight crashed against my temple.

Pain and blackness. Far above me I heard sobbing. Drops of hot rain splattered my cheek. Then the sweet blanket of death covered me and took me from this life.

SIX.

A voice said, "Hope you like it up the a.s.s."

Pain filled my head and I groaned. A hand slapped my face. A ring dug into my cheekbone. I struggled to focus. Where were my gla.s.ses? I reached up to rub my eyes, but my hands were cuffed behind my back. I took a deep breath and gagged. It smelled like s.h.i.t. Like a latrine. Flies buzzed on my eyelids. I blinked, and one settled on my nose.

"I died and gone to h.e.l.l?" I asked.

"You're going to wish you had."

A fist crashed into my nose, and I saw red. I gasped, my body quivered, an o.r.g.a.s.m of damaged nerve and broken bone. It made me feel clean, the trembling joy of a nun bathing in holy waters. For a long, glorious moment I convulsed in ecstasy, before it leaked away, taking my happiness from me. My vision slowly cleared. A black blob stuck to the tip of my nose.

"Hey," I said. "The human flyswatter."

A face loomed over me. Its ashen pallor announced a true limeno. My kind of guy. His nose was flat and speckled with acne scars, the kind you get from growing up in this sea of filth. He wore a gun under his armpit and a badge on his belt.

Personal favorite joke: What's a cop?

Answer: A thug with a badge.

He held a photo close to my face. "Know this woman?"

I squinted. The official emba.s.sy portrait. "Lynn." Then I remembered. "She's dead, isn't she?"

"I know she's dead, a.s.shole. You killed her."

I shook my head. I was still half-awake. "Me? What are you talking about?"

He flicked a large matte photo onto the table in front of me. Lynn reclined naked on my c.o.c.kroach-strewn floor. Masking tape outlined her body.

I spat blood. "How?"

"You need to ask?"

A throat cleared. "Strangled," said a voice.

I nodded at the man in the shadows. "Who's your b.u.m buddy, marica?"

The man stepped into the light. It was Major Villega. He crossed his arms and winked at me.

"Figures," I said. "Sc.u.m always floats to the surface."

Villega looked at the other man's back, held a finger to his puffy lips. "Well, profesor," he said in Spanish. "I see you've been involved in some extracurricular activities."

"Nothing worse than what you do every day for a living," I said. I spat on the floor.

My interrogator clutched my b.a.l.l.s through my jeans. "You didn't even f.u.c.k her first. That's what I don't get."

"I didn't-"

He squeezed. Hard. "What kind of man are you?"

I kicked him in the shin with my bare toes. Savored the crunch of bone on bone. My flip-flops bent but did not break. He swore and let go of my sack. Stood, rubbed his leg.

"The amba.s.sador has enemies," I said. "It could have been anyone."

The man limped around behind me, tipped my chair forward. I dug in with my feet, but he twisted my handcuffed wrists sideways. I fell. He pressed his knee into my lower vertebrae.

"They found her in your apartment."

"Where they found me too," I said. "Someone knocked me out when I got home. Or what, you think I killed the woman, then whacked myself on the side of the head?"

"Then how do you explain this?"

A length of heavy rope fell to the ground at my cheek. He held up the end: a hangman's noose dangled from his hand.

"Found this in your bathroom."

A metal bucket sc.r.a.ped along the floor until it stood next to my head. A swarm of flies buzzed. The stench was overpowering. The man pulled me to my knees. The bucket was full of s.h.i.t. The kind of bucket they use in prisons without indoor plumbing. Looked like human s.h.i.t. Brown and lumpy, a fecal pudding.

I said, "I can explain."

A snap of latex as he gloved his hands.

"Well?"

I opened my mouth. Was there anything I could say that would change his mind? I doubted it. Why bother trying? I was ready to take my punishment. I shook my head. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. He grabbed me by the hair, shoved my head into that chocolate broth.

Amazing the sorts of things that go through your head when it's submerged in a bucket of feces. I didn't think about the multiple varieties of hepat.i.tis to which I was being exposed, the numerous kinds of dysentery and other noxious diseases I might get. I didn't feel anger at the detective. It wasn't anything personal. I knew that. He was just doing his job.

As I inhaled a t.u.r.d through my nose, and the oxygen-depleted air in my lungs leaked through my lips, and the taste made me vomit into the vile fluid, inhaling my own bile, all I could think of was Lynn. Sure, she was a b.i.t.c.h. But she was my b.i.t.c.h, and I had loved her. I realized that now. And someone had killed her.

Who would do such a thing, and why?

I would never know the answer to that question. I was ready to die. I deserved it. I would leave this world with my questions unanswered, drowned in a bucket of poo.

Hands unb.u.t.toned my shirt, pulled it back from my chest and down to my wrists. They pinned my forearms behind me and removed the handcuffs. Lifted my head from the bucket.

I coughed and vomited in long, heaving gasps, trying to empty my stomach and lungs at the same time. Hands pulled me to my feet, wrapped a towel around my face. They tugged the shirt free of my wrists. Where was my sweater? The things you think at times like this. The handcuffs clicked tight around my wrists again. Fingers groped at my jeans, unbuckled my belt, pulled my pants around my ankles. They were going to sodomize me before I died. I was too weak to resist.

There were two of them, perhaps three. They got my trousers off me, and I was naked. I wondered what they thought of my scars. One held the towel around my face. The other shoved me forward. My hip grazed a doork.n.o.b. The s.h.i.t drained from one ear. Our footsteps echoed along a corridor. A toilet flushed. A faucet squeaked. Water pattered on a tile floor. Pooled under my toes.

With the last of my strength I struck up and back with my elbow. It landed on something hard. A jaw, maybe. An unfamiliar voice swore in Spanish. A fist slammed into my left kidney, and I buckled, groaning. A hand grabbed the handcuffs, held my arms still. The towel disappeared. Someone shoved me under a shower head.

"Close your eyes."

I kept them open. Whatever they were going to do, I wanted to see.

Strong hands ma.s.saged my scalp. Clumps of s.h.i.t dripped from the sides of my face. The lump on my head throbbed. My eyes began to sting. I smelled shampoo mixed in with the s.h.i.t.

"The f.u.c.k?"

A voice chuckled. "I told you, close your eyes."

This time I obeyed.

A sponge attacked the side of my face. "Inhale deep."

Again I obeyed. The sponge sparred with my face, my broken nose, my forehead, my eyelids, the rough stubble on my chin. It jabbed against my temple and I whimpered in pain, exhaling bubbles of s.h.i.t-flavored soap.

When he finished, he pushed me under the shower and let the water run over my chest and back. I cleared my throat and hawked up a t.u.r.d. The shower squeaked off. I stood up straight.

"Open your eyes."

My clothing lay folded on a nearby table. My raggedy old sweater, too. Even my gla.s.ses.

"Turn around."

I turned. They removed the handcuffs.

"Get dressed."

I got dressed.

My bather wore a nurse's white uniform. Two young policemen, probably conscripts, stood with their batons in hand and watched. One held his nose pinched between two fingers, his head tilted back.

"Follow me."

The nurse led me down a long corridor, the conscripts following close behind. He opened a door and held it for me. Unlike the last room, this one was clean, well-scrubbed, well-lit. A metal desk stood in the middle, two chairs on either side. The room smelled of disinfectant.

A pair of snakeskin boots rested on the desk. Attached to them reclined a large black man, playing cards. Solitaire. His broad shoulders cast a monstrous shadow on the floor. A white cowboy hat rested on its crown at his elbow. His shaved head glistened in the harsh yellow glare of the naked bulb. The gray in his eyebrows was the only hint of his age. He looked up as I came in.

It was Ambo.

I leaned across the desk, held out my hand.

Ambo asked me, "What are you punishing yourself for?"

Nine months earlier. I'd just met Pitt. We were in the emba.s.sy's inner sanctum, applying ourselves to a crystal decanter of Scotch. White ties fluttered under our chins, the amba.s.sador and Pitt in tailor-made white tailcoats, me in my black rent-a-tux that reeked of diesel fumes. Ambo scratched his nose with a thumbnail, an unfiltered Camel clamped between two knuckles. Pitt was in the bathroom doing a line, and we both knew it. I coughed on my single malt. Wiped my lips and put my gla.s.s down. I was unaccustomed to such quality liquor. It was my first drink in two days.

"My conscience would look good on a stripper, sir," I said.

Pitt was mad at me. No, at Ambo. Mad in general. He only brought me along to p.i.s.s off his father. Look, Dad! Street riffraff! I was the awkward f.u.c.k-up of an expat guaranteed to say something offensive. I came along anyway. Free booze was free booze. An excuse to break my two-day Lent, a futile attempt to free myself from my many addictions. The grating throb of a hangover tomorrow would be a welcome distraction.

"Meet my drug dealer," was how he introduced me at the gates of the fortress.

Was it a cry for attention? He was adopted. I knew that. Everyone knew that. It was pretty obvious. Who ever heard of a black man siring a Swedish G.o.d? But even in the half an hour I had seen them together, I could tell that Ambo cared. About Pitt. More than my old man cared about me, and that sc.u.mbag was flesh and blood. There was something vicious, almost ungrateful, about the way Pitt treated his father.

"You don't sell v.i.a.g.r.a, do you?" Ambo asked, greeting me in the garden when I arrived. Held my hand in his, then winked.

I said, "In fact, I do." And rattled an orange prescription container at the side of my head. The way I treated my body, I needed it, too.

He laughed, his six-foot-something frame booming the sound into the smoggy night. On his head, a pale Stetson, curved up at the sides. He had been a pro basketball player in his youth, back before the days of the twenty-million-dollar contract, and on his right fist a diamond-encrusted championship ring sparkled dusky and hard under the fairy lights. No wonder the unpolished wedding band on his left hand got so little attention.

Now he was intent on dissecting me.

"Guilt will kill you sooner than a gun."

He dropped the Stetson onto his desk, aimed his cigarette at me. "Pieu," he said, and laughed, the smoke tickling my nostrils with promises of temporary happiness, or at least reduced anxiety. I had been cold turkey for two days. No nicotine. No booze. No cocaine. I felt like s.h.i.t. I b.u.mmed a cigarette and lit it. Two out of three ain't bad.

"What makes you think that I have guilt?" I asked.

"Every man is guilty of something." He looked at his cigarette and ground it out, half-finished. He propped his snakeskin boots onto the wide expanse of desk. They glimmered in the dim light. "Every man sins."