Salsa Nocturna: A Bone Street Rumba Collection

by Daniel José Older

  "Got it," Phoebus mumbles. "But who's that?"

  "That's Jimmy," I say. "He's my trainee. And he's coming with us."

  "Nice to meet you," Jimmy says, smiling down at Phoebus.

  "He can see me?" The new guy is scandalized.

  I'm about to spit out some other slick line I had memorized when I notice it: With the coming dusk, the ghosts have floated gradually out into the streets and there's hundreds and hundreds of them. More ghosts than people. Phantom Overload. What's more, they're bustling about and interacting with the living like it's just the way things are supposed to be. I'm rendered speechless for a few seconds. It's disturbing but strangely beautiful too. My first instinct is to leave Phoebus and Jimmy behind and go for a jaunty stroll down a street where for once, the two disparate halves of me happily cohabitate.

  "This is all highly irregular," Phoebus sputters. I can tell from Jimmy's awed face he's as entranced as I am. But there's business to be taken care of. Several battalions of soulcatchers are gearing themselves up and will soon be on the way to wreak havoc on this quiet intermingling. And we still have no idea what's going on.

  "Phoebe," I say.

  "Phoebus."

  "Phoebus, keep an eye on things over here. I'm going to meet Silvan and the bus driver at the abandoned lot."

  "We're not – uh – we're not supposed to split up."

  "And yet: Off I go."

  "Oh."

  I almost feel bad, but then I remember that Phoebus is just a feeble extension of Botus. Sympathy dissolves into disdain. Much better. Jimmy and I walk off towards the lot.

  * * *

  "Turns out you're not Mexican," I tell Silvan when we reach the top of the trash-strewn hill where he's waiting for us. "You're Ecuadorian."

  "I know," says Silvan. "But you fucking Dominicans can't tell the difference."

  "I'm fucking Puerto Rican."

  "I know that too."

  So a little Latin-to-Latin humor is not the way to start things out. Live and learn. The busdriver and Jimmy are looking uncomfortably back and forth between me and Silvan.

  "Um – con permiso," The busdriver ventures timidly. He's a tall, round ghost with big bulgy eyes and three days of stubble. His beat up old van idles a few feet away. "You think we could get down to business? I can't stay long."

  "I'll be brief," I say. "I don't know what the problem is, sir—"

  "Esteban Morales, from Michoacán." The bus driver's wide eyes dance across the abandoned lot like shivering searchlights.

  "Señor Morales, The New York Council of the Dead has been anxious for any excuse to kick some Remote District ass. Now, I for one, don't want that to happen, and I don't think Mr. Silvan here does either, ornery bastard though he might be, but believe me when I tell you they are on their way and it won't be pretty. So, Esteban, please, tell us what it will take to get you to start collecting the dead again."

  "No," Esteban says. "No se puede."

  "What do you mean, no se puede?"

  "It means it can't be done," Silvan says.

  "I know that," I growl. "I mean why not?"

  "It's that the dead won't let me take them because they aren't from my jurisdiction. They're not from here. They're our people but they're from faraway."

  Immigrant dead? That in its own right isn't so unusual – when you die and get carted off you can turn up any damn place or nowhere at all. Thing is, it's really not up to you and folks certainly don’t go moving from place to place in packs. You're basically stay in whatever city or township you pop up in. At least, in the States that how it works...

  "It seems," Silvan says, "that several communities around Latin America have figured out how to travel in the afterlife."

  "And they've come to be with their families?" Jimmy blurts out. "That's sweet!"

  "It is sweet," Silvan nods, "but unfortunately it is also an untenable situation. Resources are running dry. Overcrowding has become the constant state. We are quickly approaching critical point."

  All this terminology is getting on my nerves. I'm about to say something slick about it when I notice a rustling motion at the foot of our trashy hill. A crowd of ghosts is waiting down there, glaring icily towards us. Their wraith clouds wave gently like drying laundry in the evening breeze. They look pissed.

  "We're not leaving," a tall gangly ghost calls out from the crowd. "Never leaving. Not by force and not by choice. And not in the damn bus."

  Esteban takes his cue and makes himself scarce. The ghost bus leaves a puff of exhaust behind as it sputters off into the night. Jimmy is suddenly very anxious. I can feel his jitters sparkling around him like eager fireflies. The crowd of ghosts hovers up the hill.

  I take a step towards them. "Look, I'm from the Council but I hear where you're coming from. I don't want this to get messy."

  "Then get out of here, güey, and take your Council goons. We've come this far to be with our families. We're not going nowhere." A general hoorah goes up. As the ghost mob starts to clutter closer around us I notice most of them are carrying chains and clubs.

  "The Council goons are coming regardless of what I tell them to do," I say. As if to prove my point, the mournful battle howl of the approaching soulcatchers rings out in the night air. It's not a comforting sound. "They wanted an excuse to get in this place and you've all given them one. I know you want to be with your people, but all you're doing is putting the ones you love in danger."

  "You really believe that mierda, compadre?" the tall gangly one demands. He steps a few feet out of the crowd. He has a scraggily black beard and eyes that keep rolling in different directions. An epic adventure is scrawled in tatts over his translucent skin. Jimmy takes a step behind me, but surely his skinny-ass moose head is poking out well above mine.

  "We are happy here!" gangly says, to more uproarious applause.

  "Tell 'em, Moco! ¡Dile la verdad!" someone yells. "¡Sí se puede!"

  "No," I say. "No se puede. Something must not've been working out because..." I have to stop mid-sentence. My mind is suddenly too busy working things out to bother making my mouth move. "Silvan!" I say quietly. "Jimmy, where's Silvan?"

  "Dunno, Carlos."

  I whirl around but the slippery instigator has vanished. And here I was thinking I was the Malinche.

  "Your representative is the one you need to talk to, people," I announce. "García went to the Council begging for help. Probably received a pretty payoff from it too. The wheels are in motion now though, there's no stopping it. You have to clear out."

  "We'll crush the Council!" Moco yells, his eyes boggling wildly. Another hoorah goes up.

  It's getting to be time to leave. I back up a few steps to position myself behind a rusted-out refrigerator. At the edge of the field I see my new partner Phoebus at the head of a group of armored soulcatchers. He looks different, Phoebus. His whole demeanor has changed – he's floating upright instead of in the usual cowering posture. Also, he's yelling out orders. But I don't even get a chance to think it all through because then Moco spots the soldiers.

  "¡Compadres!" he hollers. "Let's kill the insolent pigfuckers!" Doesn't take much poetry to rile up a bloodthirsty crowd. The angry ghosts rush towards the edge of the lot, chains and clubs swinging wildly above their heads. At a command from the newly non-doofy Phoebus, the soulcatchers jump into a defensive position: A solid wall of impenetrable supernatural armor. It looks fierce, but some of those boys are pissing themselves with fear. The mob moves as one – they surge suddenly up into the air above the lot and come crashing down on the heads of the waiting soulcatchers like a damn tsunami wave.

  You can see right off the bat it's not going well for the COD boys. Armed with the superior numbers, the fury of the righteous and those nasty clubs and chains, the mob is laying a solid beating on the dozen or so soulcatchers. Three fellows in straw hats have cornered a soldier and are laying into him with their clubs – I hear him screaming in agony as the blows pierce through his armor and shred his translucent clou
d. Moco storms through the melee, his chain whipping in a vicious circle above his head. The thrill of victory is in his stride, a casual overconfidence that I know well.

  "What you wanna do?" Jimmy says behind me.

  "This whole damn situation is starting to feel like one big setup, kid."

  "Silvan?"

  "Definitely in on it, somehow. I don't like it. Feel like a damn pawn and I'm not even sure whose."

  "Can we go?"

  I realize Jimmy's trembling. It wasn't so long ago he was having his living soul torn out by those American Girl dolls, so I can see where he'd be a little hesitant about the vicious battle raging a few feet away. "You go head, kid. I have to see this one through."

  "'salright," he says, fixing his mouth into a determined frown. "You stay I stay." Not bad. "You got a plan?"

  "Nope. Gotta see what happens next."

  * * *

  The fighting has scattered out into the streets now and it sends a vicious whirlwind of combat swirling beneath the tracks. The few living folks walking by recognize something wrong and take cover in shops and behind cars. Seems the soulcatchers have rallied some: They've slashed a few mob members into tattered ghost shards that lie motionless on the pavement. Suddenly Phoebus rears up above the fighting. I'm still stunned by his transformation from dweeb to superghost. "If you won't heed the Council," he calls out over the din of battle, "perhaps you haven't fully understood what is at risk to you and your loved ones." Jeering and shouts from the crowd as a few objects fly up towards him. Undeterred, my deceptive partner nods at four of his men and they immediately detach from their adversaries and bee-line it into one of the storefront churches.

  "Stop them!" Moco hollers. But the soulcatchers have already returned out onto the street, each wrapped around a living, breathing, screaming person. The fighting, the yelling, the sound of weapons tearing into dead flesh: Everything stops. The angry mob is suddenly very quiet as they turn and stare at the hos-tages – two middle aged women, a guy in his twenties and a fourteen year old girl...

  "That's my granddaughter!" an aging guajiro ghost yells, throwing down his club and stepping forward.

  "And my nephew, Alex!" calls out another.

  "¡Mi hija!" screams a middle-aged ghost as she rushes forward.

  "I thought the COD wasn't supposed to fuck with the living!" Jimmy whispers.

  "They're – we're not." I realize now I'm trembling. For all the chaos, everything's still feeling like it's playing out according to some heinous plan. "Someone high up must've given them the authority to..." Nothing is what it seems. I already knew that but apparenly I have to learn again and again. I'm getting ready to hole up for an extended hostage negotiation when the four soulcatchers wrap their arms around their hostages' faces like cellophane. I think the crowd is just too stunned to react in time: After a few seconds of squirming each living human goes limp and then sprawls out lifelessly on the pavement.

  The crowd surges forward en masse, toppling the four soulcatchers and instantly tearing two of them to shreds. I hear Jimmy throwing up behind me. In the chaos of it all though, I notice the remaining COD soldiers jump into motion and sprint away from the fray. "Now that you see what we will do to your beloved families," Phoebus yells at the crowd, "maybe you'll rethink sticking around. We're pulling back, but not for long. Regroup yourselves and come to your senses, rebels!" The soulcatchers pour out of the shops and salons, each wrapped around a struggling human, and fall back towards the abandoned lot that Jimmy and I are hiding in.

  "Get out of here, now!" I whispershout at Jimmy, who's trying to spit the last bits of vomit out of his mouth. He stands but just stares past me, eyes wide. "Go!" I say. "Not the time to be all heroic, kid, just get out!" He's still not moving, just staring. Finally, I turn around to see what he's looking at.

  "They've got Gordo," he says. And it's true.

  * * *

  The Council soulcatchers are all in a tizzy as they retreat up the hill towards us. They're young, barely older than Jimmy, and by the look of their crisp, unstained uniforms and shiny helmets, brand new recruits. A few of them are injured, limbs hanging useless at their sides. Whatever plan is in place, these kids were clearly kept far out of the loop. Gordo walks calmly along with his fatigued captor. He's trying to appear unimpressed but is probably terrified. Or maybe I'm projecting.

  I grab Jimmy roughly around the neck and throw him on the ground as they walk up. A couple of the boys I've seen before come running up to me. "Where you been, Carlos?" a kid named Dennis asks.

  "Yes, Agent Delacruz," Phoebus says, eyeing Jimmy. "Where have you been?"

  "Infiltrated the rebel mob," I say. "And I took a hostage of my own while I was at it."

  "We're not really gonna kill these ones too, are we?" Dennis says. You can hear a quiver of fear in his voice. A few of the hostages are sobbing.

  "We can't!" another one yells. "The mob'll tear us to pieces! This is crazy!"

  "Everyone shut up," Phoebus snaps. "You're soldiers, soulcatchers. You will not show fear. You will not retreat or give up, ever. Understand?"

  "But you knew they would rush in on our guys when you had them kill those hostages, didn't you?" Dennis demands. "You did that on purpose."

  "It's not for you to question my decisions," Phoebus says. He's seething with restrained rage. "Now, everyone fall into line and shut up." There's a few murmurs of frustration and the soldiers fall into a tense kind of quiet. Shouldn't take much to rile 'em back up though.

  "I heard the mob is planning an ambush," I say. "There was a few lurking around here I had to deal with before you guys showed up, but a couple got away. They're probably crawling all over this place by now."

  "Oh shit oh shit oh shit," one of the soulcatchers starts chanting.

  "What's the matter, Tyler?"

  "I thought I saw something move over there by that old car!"

  "Where?"

  "By the car, asshole, by the fucking car!"

  "Wait!" I yell pointing at some random spot in the dark lot. "What's that over there?" Everyone turns and gapes into the emptiness.

  "This is fucked up," someone says.

  "Calm down!" Phoebus yells. "Everyone calm the fuck down!" I suppress a chuckle.

  "Listen," I say. "I have orders from Botus. Everyone is to remain here with the prisoners. Phoebus and I are gonna go politick with the rebels and see what we can work out to end this mess peacefully." A general murmur of approval rises from the soldiers.

  "Now now," Phoebus stutters, "let's not be rash. Let the fools have a moment to discuss..."

  "Every moment more we give them is a moment they have to plan another attack," I say. "Rebels love ambushes."

  "He's right!" Tyler declares. "Go now!"

  "It's true," says Dennis. "Wrap this shit up quick."

  I start walking down the hill. "You coming?" I can feel Phoebus's furious glare on the back of my head as I hobble down the hill on my cane. He growls and then floats after me, frowning.

  "How quickly your young friend went from student to hostage," Phoebus muses when we round a corner onto a quiet residential block. By way of an answer I pull the blade out of my cane and swipe at him. He hurls himself away just a split second too late and I hack a sliver of cold cloud off him. Before I can swing again, he's on me, icy hands wrapped around my neck, cool breath on my face. I push forward against him, throwing us into a brick wall. Phoebus loosens his grip just long enough for me to shove him off and stumble backwards a few steps. I raise my blade. "Alright, Phoebus – or should I say Chairman Phoebus?"

  He pulls his own blade out and grunts with irritation.

  "You can act, I'll give you that," I say. "Definitely had me convinced you were just a sniveling little new guy. But why bother? You could've just waltzed in as is and torn shit up."

  "But you see, we don't trust you, Carlos." His voice seethes with hatred. "We wanted to see what you'd do. Keep an eye on you. For the plan to proceed, it had to be kept completely secret
."

  "Even from the youngins you got doing the dirty work."

  He lunges forward, blade first, and I parry off the attack and sidestep out of the way. The Chairman is panting heavily now.

  "What I want to know," he says, "is are you just a renegade dickhead or are you working for someone?"

  "Too many questions," I say, making like I'm going to swipe at him again. When he goes to block I stab forward instead, catching him right in the core of his long silvery body. Chairman Phoebus howls and stumbles, forcing the blade deeper into himself and pinning us both back against the brick wall. Higher ups are usually crap at one-on-one combat.

  "You can't...kill me," he gasps and for a second I'm afraid he might mean that literally. Did the bastard figure out some slick supernatural way not to die again? But then he finishes his thought: "...I'm a Chairman..."

  "Guess now there's only six," I say, pulling out my blade. He's oozing out all over, his flickering corpse now a dead weight draped over me. Don't know if I'll ever be able to shower enough to get that feeling away. I heave him off me as his whole body sheds itself into a mess of tattered ghost flesh.

  The angry mob has transformed itself into a confused support group when I find them huddled in a storefront church. A few of the ghosts are sobbing inconsolably while others pat them on their heaving backs. Moco is walking in anxious circles, trying to rile folks up again.

  "Listen up," I say, walking into the dusty church, "we can end this now. It's only gonna get worse if we don't." I send Moco a piercing stare, which isn't easy the way his damn eyes keep boggling, but he seems to take my point and stays quiet. "I can tell you that any battle that comes after this won't go well for you, and it'll go even worse for your loved ones. It's not a threat – I didn't know it was going to go down like that tonight, and I'm sorry it did." Ghosts are looking up at me with sorrow and fear in their eyes. "I know you just came here to be with your families, to carry on in an afterlife that's harmonious with the living. And believe me," I had been in let's-clean-this-mess-up mode but I'm suddenly choking over my words, "I want as much as any of you to see that happen, here in New York." They believe me. Even I believe me. I guess it's 'cause it's true, but still – I'm startled. "But it's not time yet. There's more work to be done. Foundations to be laid. I dealt with the dickhead that ordered your living relatives to be murdered." A cautious hurrah rises from the mourning ghosts, startling me again. "But I'm going to have to say that you did it so I can keep working things from the inside." That seems to be alright with everyone.