Back to Blood: A Novel

by Tom Wolfe

  “Cowardly?” said Nestor. That startled him and hit a nerve. “They can say a lot of things, traidor and all that, but I haven’t heard anybody say ‘cowardly.’ I’d like to know how the hell anybody could say ‘cowardly’… Jesus Christ… I’d like to see anybody else come close to what I did… ‘Cowardly.’ ” He shook his head. “You heard somebody actually use that word, cowardly?”

  “Yes. ‘Cobarde,’ they said… every time.”

  “They?” said Nestor. “How do you know that? You said they wouldn’t talk to you.”

  “Some of them talk to me,” said John Smith. “But that wasn’t where I heard it. I heard it on the radio, and not just once, either.”

  “What radio? Who said it?”

  “The Spanish-language stations,” said John Smith. “ ‘Cobarde.’ In fact, I think it was two or three stations.”

  “Assholes,” muttered Nestor. He could feel his adrenaline kicking. “What’s supposed to be cobarde about it? How do they figure they can call it that?”

  “They don’t bother with much figuring. Here’s their reasoning, if that’s what it is. What they say is, it’s easy to be a pez gordo and go around acting like a valiente when you have all the other peces gordos behind you, the whole police force, the Coast Guard, the Miami Herald.” He chuckled. “I guess they throw in Yo No Creo el Miami Herald for good measure. You haven’t been listening to the Latino radio?”

  “I haven’t had time,” said Nestor. “If you knew what my last twenty-four hours were like…” He paused. He could feel he was entering some dicey territory now. “… you’d know what I mean.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened,” said John Smith. Now he was staring straight into Nestor’s eyes with an intensity that just wasn’t John Smith. Nestor got the feeling that this must be the Reporter Look, the same way cops hit people with the Cop Look. Not that the two were equivalent. He stared off at the liquor bottle light show. Every cop Nestor had ever talked to on that subject considered the press a bunch of pussies. Nestor was willing to bet that the one right beside him at this bar was a pussy, too. There was something about the soft way he talked and all his good manners… He was the kind—if you made the slightest threat physically, he could fold and run away. But the older cops also said that they were like little spiders, like black widows. They could bite and cause you major grief.

  That being the case, he now focused on John Smith and said, “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’d probably need approval before I talked about that.”

  “Whose approval?”

  “I don’t know exactly, because I’ve never been through the procedure. But I’d need a zone captain at least.”

  “I don’t get that,” said John Smith. “You talked to me after you brought the so-called leader of the underground down from the mast. Whose approval did you have to get before you did that?”

  “Nobody’s, but that was diff—”

  A suddenly aggressive John Smith ran right over Nestor’s words with “And who wrote you the most favorable story that came out of the whole thing?… and the most accurate. Did I treat you badly in any way?”

  The man bored in with his Reporter Look.

  “No,” said Nestor, “but—”

  The reporter trampled again. “So what makes you think I’d try to make you look bad now? The people who are causing you trouble are El Nuevo Herald—I hope you saw what they said”—Nestor averted his eyes and rocked his head forward and back slowly, indicating a very faint yes—“and the Latino radio and Latino TV tried to bury you!” the reporter continued. “And they’re not going to stop with yesterday. They’ll keep it up today, too. Don’t you want anybody on your side? You want to be nothing but a piñata the whole bunch can keep on having fun whacking at? Oh, I can go ahead and write a nice piece analyzing what you did and why it was absolutely necessary and humane. But that would just be an editorial, and not even by an editor. I need some details that only you can provide.”

  The hell of it was that reporter John Smith was right. The word cobarde kept throbbing in Nestor’s brain. His sense of honor decreed that such a slur not go unanswered. Revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord—and in the meantime, what happens to your job, big avenger? If he dumps everything out for the reporter’s benefit… even if he doesn’t criticize the Department in any way… a big newspaper article dwelling upon Himself in a police action this highly publicized—he doesn’t need any written-down protocols to know what the Department will think of that. ::::::Still, everybody—everybody—needs to get one thing straight. No way is Nestor Camacho a cobarde… you assholes… but that’s not for me to say, is it. That’s for the Department to say… and fat chance of them doing it. Oh, they’ll defend their decision to bring the guy down off the mast, but they’re not going to go into raptures over the cop who went up and did it—::::::

  Nestor didn’t realize how he must have looked to John Smith. He was staring not at John, but into the mirror behind all the lit-up liquor bottles. He didn’t bother looking at himself, even though there he was in the mirror. He was running his right hand over the knuckles of his left hand and then his left hand over the knuckles of his right hand and his right hand over the knuckles of his left hand and his left hand—

  Only at this instant did he realize what a picture of indecision he presented. John Smith said, “Okay, Nestor, I’ll tell you what. If you’ll give me the details, I promise I won’t quote you or even indicate I’ve talked to you.”

  “Yeah, but there’d be things only I would know about, and then everyone would know it was me.”

  “Look,” said John Smith, “I’ve run into that problem before, and I know how to handle it. I’ll indicate any number of other sources. How do you think the big police stories get in the papers? I’m not talking about straight-out news that a crime has occurred. I’m talking about the inside story on how a big crime was solved, who ratted out who, things like that. It’s all cops giving reporters information that makes the reporter look good and reporters writing stories that make the cops look good. Both sides know how to protect the other. It happens all the time, and I mean all the time. If you don’t have some way to get your story out, other people, like City Hall, for example, will tell your story for you… and believe me, you’re not gonna like that. To them you’re just this… this… mosquito who bites his fellow Cubans. Look, I can get your story out—and make it clear that you wouldn’t cooperate. I’ll say that you failed to return phone calls, which will be true. In fact, it’s already true. About nine-thirty I called the Marine Patrol office and asked to speak to you, but they wouldn’t put a personal call through to the Safe Boat.”

  With alarm in his voice, Nestor said, “You mean they already know you wanted to talk to me?”

  “Of course!” said John Smith. “Listen, I’m going to get a beer. Would you like one?”

  A beer? How could the man suddenly start thinking about a beer? It astounded Nestor. He resented it. On the other hand… maybe a beer wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it would calm him down a little, dilute the adrenaline flow. If he had some other kind of drug, he’d no doubt take it right now… and a bottle of beer was pretty mild stuff. “Uhh… yeah,” he said. “I’ll have one.”

  John Smith raised his hand to get the bartender’s attention. As he ordered the two beers, Nestor’s resentment began to build back up. ::::::It’s not his ass that’s on the line, hanging out over the edge.:::::: John Smith turned back to Nestor, acting as if there had been no break in the conversation at all. “Of course!” he said. “If I’m planning to write a story about you—and they’ll see that story soon enough—of course I’d try to reach you directly. It would look weird if I didn’t. That’s just standard operating procedure.”

  The beers arrived. Nestor didn’t wait for John Smith. He just tilted his up and drank… a nice long gulp of it, too… and a wave of warmth rose from his stomach and romped through his brain and flowed throu
ghout his entire central nervous system… and it did seem to calm him down.

  He started with the end of the shift twenty-four hours ago… and all the other cops going nuts over him and telling him, in a jocular cop way, of course, how he had electrified the entire city… and he had driven home… as if on wings… and he had a big surprise waiting just inside the front door.

  “And there’s my father. He’s been waiting for me, and he’s standing there with his legs spread like a wrestler’s and his arms crossed like this—”

  —all at once he cut himself off and locked on to John the Reporter’s gaze with his… and stayed that way for what he hoped would be a suspenseful few seconds… When he resumed speaking, it was in a different tone of voice, one that suited that look precisely.

  “Do you remember what you just promised me about how you would use what I’m gonna tell you?”

  “Yes…”

  “About how you’ll cover me with the sources?” He intensified the look.

  “Yes…”

  “I’m just making sure we understand each other.” He skipped a couple of beats… “I’d be really pissed… if we didn’t.”

  With that, he turned that certain look on to the max. Only then did he actually realize it was the Cop Look. Without a word it conveyed a message. On this terrain I rule. I have ultimate power, and I’m quite ready to blow you away if I have to. Oh, so you want to know what it would take to make me “have to”? Well, let’s start with breach of verbal contract.

  The pale americano blanched dead white—or so it looked to Officer Camacho. Journalist John Smith’s lips parted slightly… but he said nothing. He just nodded yes, dipping his forehead forward ever so diffidently.

  The next thing Nestor knew… he was sitting there in the glamorous glow of the Isle of Capri bar’s lucent liquor bottles, spilling, as they say, his guts. It all came out. He couldn’t tell this americano—he had seen exactly twice in his life—enough. He had an overwhelming urge… not to confess, for he hadn’t sinned… just one more beer but to tell somebody, some at least halfway neutral party, of his anguish and humiliation, his rejection by all those closest to him—at once!—in less than twenty-four hours!—and by untold thousands of his own people, just one more beer his fellow cubanos, who were only too happy to believe what they heard on that most powerful of organs, Spanish-language radio, and even by that old-fashioned medium no one under forty ever looked at anymore, namely, the newspapers… his father standing there in his doorway, which was Nestor’s, too, with his wide-legged stance, like a wrestler’s, and his arms folded across his chest—like an infuriated wrestler’s… just one more beer and neighbors he had known all his life who turned their backs the moment they saw him coming… and, to top it off, his fellow cops, who had hailed him as a hero twenty-four hours ago just one more beer… and had now turned chilly with embarrassment over this tainted man in their midst… just one more beer—in cervisia veritas… all of it, all of it, right down to his cell phone ringing in his pocket while he’s this close to falling to his death from seventy feet above a boat deck, trying to go hand over hand down a hundred-foot cable carrying a man with his legs… and then the goddamned phone starts beep-beep-beeping with text messages, and people—his own people—cubanos—are screaming bloody murder at him from the Rickenbacker Causeway bridge… all of it, even the cold expression on Magdalena’s face when he began shouting ¡CONCHA! at her—

  For three and a half hours Nestor poured out every last drop of his sorrows and his soul… and would have never stopped, had not the Isle of Capri closed up at 4:00 a.m. The two young men were now out in the street. Nestor felt unsteady. His balance was… off. His gait lacked fluidity. Well, no wonder… the stress of the last two days… the lack of sleep… lack of food, too, come to think of it. He never did come to think he might just be close to wasted after downing nine beers in a row, plus a tequila shot, more alcohol than he had ever had in one evening in his life.

  But the americano periodista must have come to think of it, because he looked at Nestor and said, “You’re planning to drive home now?”

  Nestor barked a bitter little laugh. “Home? I don’t have one a those anymore, home.”

  “Then where are you planning to spend the night?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nestor, except that it came out I’ownoh. “I’ll sleep inna car if I’ve to… No! I know… I’ll drive overt Rodriguez’s and sleep on a mat inna gym.”

  “What if it’s locked?”

  Another bitter little laugh. “Locked? Nothing’s locked if you know what a cop knows.” Even Nestor picked up a whiff of his own cop braggadocio.

  “Nestor”—that impudent first-name business again—“I think you’re too exhausted to drive anywhere. I’ve got a pullout in my apartment, and I’m only five minutes away at this hour. How about it?”

  Is he kidding? Sleep at some americano periodista’s place? But that word the periodista used… exhausted. Just hearing it out loud made him feel even more exhausted… exhausted, not wasted… not wasted, worn out… never felt this worn out. Aloud he said, “Maybe you’re right.”

  Afterward he could barely even remember John Smith’s driving him over to his apartment… or passing out on the pullout couch in a cramped little living room… or all the vomiting…

  When Nestor woke up, returned to the land of the conscious, it wasn’t really as late as he had hoped it would be. Only the dimmest daylight showed through the weave of a length of hopsacking that served as a makeshift curtain over the room’s only window. He felt as bad as he had ever felt in his life. If he were to lift his head off this sofa, he would pass out again. That much he knew without even testing it. A pool of pain and nausea had flooded one whole hemisphere of his brain as he lay on that side of his head. He didn’t dare tilt that pool so much as one degree or—he could already smell it—smell it—the vomitus would gush out projectile-style. He had a bleary recollection of throwing up all over the carpet just before he passed out.

  He gave up and closed his eyes again. Had to close them, and presently he fell asleep again. It wasn’t a good sleep. He kept waking up, fitfully. The main thing was not to open his eyes. That at least gave him a fighting chance of falling asleep again… however troubled sleep might be.

  When he finally woke up for good, the hopsacking curtain was all bright points of light. It must have been close to noon. He dared lift his head a few inches. This time it was awful but not impossible. He managed to swing his legs over the side of the couch and sit up… and lowered his head between his legs to bring more blood to his brain. When he brought his head back up, he put his elbows on his knees and covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. He didn’t want to have to see any more of this tiny, fetid straw-colored room. He didn’t want to do anything, but he could tell he would have to make it to the bathroom one way or another.

  He sighed out loud, for no other reason than to hear himself declare how miserable and paralyzed he felt. He sighed some more. The next thing he knew, he could hear the floor creaking with footsteps. What a dump this was… On the other hand, he didn’t even have so much as a dump to go to.

  “Good morning. Buenos días. How do you feel?”

  There was John Smith… standing in the doorway to the bathroom. Nestor lifted his head just enough to see him head to foot. The americano stood there dressed so americano, it was annoying… the khaki pants so well pressed you could cut your finger on the crease… the blue button-down shirt, open two buttons’ worth at the neck and turned back exactly two cuff lengths’ worth on each sleeve… all just so, just so. Had Nestor known and understood the word preppy, he would have realized why it got under his skin.

  But all he said was “I feel like shit… but I guess I’ll survive.” He gave John Smith a quizzical look. “I thought you’d be at work.”

  “Well, since the idea is to write a story about you, I guess I am at work. I thought I should at least hang around until you woke up.”

  The idea is
to write a story about you. In his fragile state, the thought hit Nestor with a jolt. His heart sank. What had he done? Why had he told the guy all that… crap last night? Was he insane?… all that personal crap? He had an urge to call it off—right now! But then he thought of how weak he would look to John Smith… reneging this morning after dredging his innards up for the americano and spreading them out for his inspection… four hours of it, pouring his guts out through his big mouth, and now, hungover, head throbbing… to start whining and begging, “I take it all back! Please, please, I was drunk, that was all! You can’t do this to me! Have pity! Have mercy!”—and that, the fear of looking weak and pathetic and frightened, as much as anything else, was what now kept his mouth shut… the fear of looking afraid! That by itself was enough to keep any Nestor Camacho from yielding to… the Doubts.

  “Somebody’s got to drive you back to your car,” the americano was saying. “It’s six or seven miles from here, and I’m not sure”—he lowered one eyebrow and twisted his lips up toward it in a mildly mocking smile—“I’m not completely sure you’d remember where it is.”

  That was true. All that Nestor could recall was a bar where the light show seemed so glamorous… the lights from below that filled the liquor bottles with tan and amber and tawny translucent glows and refracted a thousand tiny starbursts off their curved surfaces. He couldn’t have said why, but the memory of that glowing tableau began to calm him.

  John Smith suggested breakfast. But the thought of swallowing anything solid made Nestor bilious. He settled for a single cup of black instant coffee. Christalmighty, the americanos drank weak coffee.

  And then they were in John Smith’s Volvo, heading for the Isle of Capri restaurant. John Smith was so right. When he woke up during the night and when he first rose from the couch, he had no memory of where he had left his car.

  They drove over to Jacinto Street and then turned down Latifondo Avenue… and the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that John Smith was a good person. Last night the americano had literally taken him in… off the street!… and provided him a place to spend the night… and even waited around all morning to let him sleep as long as he wanted and drive him to his car. His fear of what this tall pale periodista americano might write began to recede. ¡Yo no creo el Miami Herald!… but John Smith was right on about how the powers that be would twist his story… his career… his life! any way that suited them best, as long as he had no voice to speak up for him… even if it had to be in the pages of the Yo No Creo Herald.