by M C Rowley
“What´s your name?”
The vagabond looked at me a little astounded. I guessed no one had asked that for a long, long time.
“Leopoldo, or Polo.”
“Thank you Polo,” I said. “I´m going to leave but I really appreciate you sharing your food with me.”
He nodded and tilted the cheap tequila at me.
It was getting dark now and it was time to take my third gamble.
“Wait,” said Polo. “You need a better disguise.”
I turned back to him, and he unpacked from one of his bags a large waterproof jacket. It was filthy and the odor of old cheese hit me.
“You´re a wanted man,” he said. “Put this on,” handing me his spare coat. “No one pays attention to bums here. And being a bum ain´t easy to fake.”
“You know who I am?”
Polo nodded.
If Polo with - I guessed - no access to internet had known who I was, what were my chances?
I took the jacket from him.
“And this,” he said, and pulled out a plastic bag covered hat.
I put it on with the jacket and felt better. We must have looked like twins.
“Good luck,” he said. “Whoever you really are.”
“How did you know me”?
“Your picture´s everywhere. Everybody knows you right now.”
I nodded at him. “Thank you, again.”
And I turned toward the towers and started walking.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Polo´s ramshackle abode lay tucked into a shallow hill. At the bottom of the hill lay the bus station, and beyond that, the towers of my apartments. I reckoned it was an hour´s trek. The pathway along the bottom of the hill running toward the central was beaten dirt, hard and cracked. The clouds still had not opened, and I was thankful. The road would have been a mud bath if it had.
I reached a larger, tarmac road on the perimeter of the bus station, and through the thick metal poles separating the scrubland from the passengers and taxis I could see inside the complex. A large U shaped entry road, where cars passed periodically, dropping off travelers. Outside the main door, I saw military uniforms. I stopped and looked closer. They were shaking down passengers. Visible action. A staple tactic of the government. In the fruitless hunt for a kidnapped governor, the least they would do is shake down random tourists and commuters. But it gave the impression that they were doing something. I smiled at the irony that their real target was watching them only 500 meters away.
I moved on.
I reached the back end of the station and left the tarmac, back into shrubs. The greenery ran almost to the apartment towers, and thus, I was covered. I moved faster, eager to make it to the hard part.
The altitude gave me a vista of the apartment towers the whole time. As I approached them, the real world returned to me. Lights were on in some of the apartments, and against the dark and low sky, the towers shined bright, a beacon. I just had to pray it was a beacon of hope, not of warning.
I made it to the apartment complex border. I checked my clothes and adjusted the plastic hat and walked in. The feel of perfect flat slabs of concrete was strange. I walked to the side of the walkway, and people started to go past. My heart sped up as the third gamble came, but Polo had been right. No one even glanced at me. I was a nothing. A vagabond, a piece of trash. One of the city´s forgotten sons or daughters. Discarded from civilization, from their housing developments, bank loans, and car credits.
It felt good to be invisible.
I walked with a slight limp. It just felt right. And it slowed me down so I could plan my access. There were three towers with about a hundred apartments in each. Mine was the south tower. At the foot of these towers, a plaza had been built, which is where I was. Each tower had two entrances. One for cars, under ground. The other on foot.
CCTV everywhere.
The entrance on foot had a security guard. I had seen that the morning the cartel had put me there. They were usually rent-a-cops in Mexico.
Sure enough, as I reached the main plaza where the three tower entrances faced each other, there was my man, and the door behind him. But there were two other rent-a-cops at the other two doors.
People milled around, dipping in and out of the blocks, all watched over by the three guards. The problem was they stood at the door, blocking the entrance. There was no way through.
I loped into the plaza, in plain view of all of them, and prayed my outfit convinced them. They didn´t look at me aside from a glance. I walked to the edge of a wall, where all three entrances were visible. Mine to the right.
I couldn´t run the guy. His friends would help. They also carried pistols, and would not think twice about killing an angry bum.
I looked at the doors. Closed and locked. The fingerprint scanner to the left of the entrance.
I sat down, my back against the cold concrete wall. Jason and his team would figure where I was soon and time was running out. I had two places to go in Lujano; Polysol, or my apartment. So they would be here eventually, or were here already.
I checked Polo´s jacket´s pockets and found an old box of matches and a straw.
I cursed myself. I hadn´t thought this through. I nearly came without the disguise. I was as lost as those Mexican soldiers at the bus station, shaking people down. Just creating a distraction so people didn´t see the truth.
Just a distraction.
I checked Polo´s hat. The thing was lined with paper. I took it out and scrunched it up into a cone shape. Then, I re- thought it and unrolled it and tore the paper into three equal parts. Then I rolled each into a tight cone.
I scanned the plaza for trash cans. There were five. So I got up and limped to each one and as I passed by each of them, pretending to look for food or something to drink, I lit each cone at the thin end and placed it deep into the discarded coffee cups, food wrappings and tissues.
I shuffled away. I worked out it would take at least five minutes for the fire to really take.
I got to the second trash can and risked a glance. No one was watching. No one cared. I planted the fire.
I reached the third and repeated the process. I then crossed the plaza and looked back to the first bin. I couldn´t see anything. Maybe the first hadn´t set off, but I had time.
I made it to the left of the door to my apartment and slumped against the wall as close as I thought possible to the door and security guard. And then I waited.
The first to ignite was the second bin. All of a sudden, it exploded. Yellow flames licked out of the deposit hole and fingered the metal lid. Black smoke plumed from it. I sideways glanced at my security guard and he stood, looking at the bin. Other people too were looking, debating whether to do anything.
My guy didn´t budge.
Then, the first bin and third went off simultaneously. This freaked everyone out. Someone shouted, and my guy´s colleague from across the way even pulled his gun and ran into the fray, shouting everyone to calm down. I went into a crouch and readied myself.
My guy didn´t budge. I cursed the indecisive fool. Come on, I urged him. But he didn´t move, he just stared at the three infernos.
But then, the second bin kind of spat. It did not explode as such, but there must´ve been an aerosol or something in there, and it popped. My guy jumped with the crack, and it did it. He ran to help his buddies.
I got up and walked briskly to the door, placed my finger on the resident scanner and waited. Red light.
I tried again.
Red light again.
I looked at my finger. There were four days of living and moving around in the rough there. I scraped it off with my teeth, forgetting any remnants of hygienic self-awareness I had once had, and tried again.
The light switched to green and the door clicked. I pushed it and entered, and made for the stairwell fast. And there it was, a nearly unused metallic staircase, spiraling up seventy floors above, each floor with a door and cheap knock off print of some impressionist pain
ting.
I headed for Floor 68.
As I climbed the stairs, my spirits rose. Three out of four gambles had paid off.
I got to my floor, and almost walked into the hallway but just stopped myself at the swing door. Through the small circular naval style window, I saw Aronson. He was standing half in, half out of my apartment. I didn´t need anymore than that and swung back out of sight. Aronson was speaking with a loud voice, though I couldn´t make out what he was saying, and at least one other person was with him. Did I wait? Or run? My plan had been to grab a change of clothes, a new disguise but that wouldn´t work now. Then, Aronson´s voice got louder and his footsteps came toward me. I jumped away from the door and cleared about five steps to the level below in one jump. I heard the swing door bang open above, one floor above. I lightened my step, taking three at a time to get ahead of him. It was agonizing. Run faster and he´d hear me. Go slower and he´d catch me up. So I kept it steady, three steps at a time, and listening to his hand banging the rail as he came behind me.
I reached the twentieth floor, and stopped.
I´d forgotten something. The cash on the roof.
I needed it more than the clothes. Aronson´s steps came steady and strong from above. No time to think. I carried on down the steps, listening all the while. At last, I made it to the entrance with the mail boxes and the guard´s back against the main door I had already snuck through. He turned and looked at me, and his eyes went wide and he shouted through the glass. Aronson was a floor or two above me. I was sandwiched.
I turned the other way and saw the door to the parking lot. I ran to it, slammed through it and went down a further two flights.
At the bottom, the underground area was dim and half full of cars. There at the side was the elevator.
It had a finger print scanner.
I scanned it. Waited while the sign said 2,1,L,S.
S meant Sótono. Basement-Floor.
The elevator went ding. Empty.
I got in and slammed the highest number available and as the doors closed, I heard the guard shouting in Spanish, not at me, but just randomly. He´d missed the elevator sound.
I got back to the top floor and headed out to the roof. It was dark now, and in the moonlight I found the cash untouched. I took it and stuffed it into the coat´s pocket.
To be safe, I waited an hour there and tried looking over the edge of the tower but couldn´t make anything out in detail.
After an hour, I returned to the stairwell, and taking great care past floor 68, made it to the bottom, and out of the door. The guard didn´t notice me. He was busy chatting to a girl in a suit.
The three bins were destroyed but black and cold now. The plaza was deserted. I dropped my pace and walked like a real bum would walk, my pockets filled with cash and for the second time that day, a smile on my face.
The walk back to Polo´s shack took an hour. It was cold, and the sky above still laid heavy above me. But still the rain had not come. I moved through the shrubs and cactus plants until I got to the bus station, and then the road above it.
I got to Polo´s shack and found him asleep, the bottle of cheap liquor now almost empty and sitting aside his inert body. I prodded him.
“Hey, Polo, wake up,” I said.
Slowly, his face began to move. He was laying like a child, the leftover of his oversized jacket scrunched up in his grasp. As his face turned upward, his eyes were drunk, blood red and bleary. His skin looked paralyzed. I thought about how it would be to live nowhere, and have booze as your only companion.
He rolled onto his back and absorbed my face a while, looking at the hat he had given me.
“You,” he said, after a minute.
“I wanted to say thank you. And to ask you if I can hide out here till morning. That ok?”
Polo sat up, and spread his arms wide. “Does it look I have any ownership over this place?”
His Spanish was eloquent, considering his intoxication levels.
“Thank you,” and I sat down next to him, looking out toward the city.
“You get done what you needed to get done?” he asked, twisting the plastic cap off the licor bottle, and swigging at what was left.
“Yes,” I said.
“I guess that´s a stupid question really,” he said. “I guess you´d be dead if you hadn´t.”
I looked at him, but then looked down. “It´s complicated.”
He nodded and swigged more licor. His voice had gained momentum.
“Is he dead?”
“Who?”
“The governor,” said Polo.
I shook my head. “No, he isn´t.”
“I knew it,” said Polo. “Goddam knew the cabrón weren´t dead. He´ll be back, I´m sure of it.”
I admired Polo´s deduction skills.
He offered me his licor but I declined.
The clouds above Lujano formed a thick black roof, under which the slither of visible sky had turned a murky purple and the small, ancient colonial buildings cut their silhouette into it. There were plenty of street lights, glowing golden, as there always were in Mexico, but they didn´t illuminate anything. Instead, they marked out the main highways and thoroughfares of the city like thin grooves carved into the blackness, filled with honey.
I sat with Polo in silence for almost two hours, slept a few more and then watched the space fill with light as the sun rose behind us. The ground under my ass was surprisingly cushiony. Polo had finished his licor and passed out again, this time slumped to his left. I sat there and thought my plan through again and again.
Once the sun was up above the hill behind us I guessed it to be around 8am, because the shadows were stretched across the brown dirt, and because the sun was heating us up again. The heat in this part was glacial and relentless. It started hot, but grew hotter, relentless it would begin to cook, then broil, and then burn you. All over a period of five hours, and then, once at its zenith, scorch with all its merciless power for five hours straight.
I got to my feet.
I took out of my jacket pocket one of the wads of pesos and counted them. I needed a decent amount for bribes, to get to Esteban, but I separated 20,000 pesos, and tucked them into Polo´s pocket.
I walked away without waking him up.
I took my time as I walked. And as I did, I recalled the website page advertising the conference and read it in my mind.
The start time. The layout of the venue had been displayed in a neat, and modern looking map of the building. The conference center was actually two buildings. Two giant squares sat opposed to each other as four sided diamonds. The plot was huge. At least ten times the size of the two buildings together.
The center was mapped as being high. 3000 Mts above sea level in fact. More or less 500 meters higher than Lujano City center.
It had been a pet project of a previous regime. That´s all I knew of it. I gathered it had been regarded as a success.
I moved down the mental photograph I held in my mind. But there was nothing of use. Just promotional copy typed by someone who likely lived a thousand miles away, and had never even clamped eyes on the place. I put it out of mind. It didn´t matter really.
For one, I was close.
And second, I knew my way in was going to be right through the front door.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Centro de Congresos was indeed a fine building, or fine design to be precise. The two squares I had seen on the map were joined by a giant, glass and steel canopy, which created an awesome, shady space the size of three football pitches. The entire place was paved in gray stone. The buildings were a costly combination of enormous glass sheets, and steel girders.
I observed them from a half kilometer away. I was at the top of the hill that both hosted the Centro de Congresos and gifted a view of the entire city of Lujano. But all the roads, and entrances into the center were on the other side. I ducked down under the cactus shrubs and moved forward until I came in through the undergrowth, at a kind of n
eck brace of fencing, housing the building. Two hours of trekking and I was here.
The track was easier because the fence had entailed the shrub being cut away a little. It formed a track running alongside it. I followed it south and round to where the entrances began.
When I arrived to the slip road that eventually entered the site, I stopped.
It was lane upon lane of standstill traffic, cars full of conference attendees, waiting in line to get in.
No-one as much as blinked at me in Polo´s clothes.
I scanned the lines for a truck and found a white Ford transit van, with Delicioso oh! written on the side, with the words, servicio de comida para eventos written underneath in neat sans font. I headed toward it, weaving through the traffic.
Of course, it was likely I would get recognized, but civilians didn´t worry me too much. And by the time I got in, their calls of alarm would barely be registering. And I was sure Esteban would protect me, as long as I got to him.
I walked through, making eye contact with no-one, and held the massive wad of cash tight in my right hand pocket. I walked steadily, business like, the van in my view. It was edging forward slowly, but I had plenty of time. We were still at least 20 meters from the checkpoint.
I reached the van and walked straight to the driver´s window, which was already rolled down. The young man, who was dressed sloppily for a catering business, in a red t-shirt with some generic emblem printed on it, his hair gelled up into some sort of mohican, looked like a lower league footballer down on his luck. He jumped back when he saw me. But he was alone, which would help my bribing a great deal.
“Eschucha,” I said.
And then I spoke in Spanish. “Let me in your truck to get through, and you get this.”
I pulled a wedge of cash from my pocket, around 120,000 pesos, and rested in on the window slot of the car. His face changed from shock to astonishment as he considered the lump of brown 500 notes, and then looked at me.
“But you´ll never get in the building,” he said, in Spanish. “They check the lot before we go into the loading area. They´ll find you. And I need this job.”
