by Rowley, M C
I headed for Floor 68.
As I climbed the stairs, my spirits rose too. 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 I found the cash untouched. I took it and stuffed 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 Thirty-Four
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 Chinese produced enormous glass sheets, and Chinese produced 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, a
t a kind of neck brace of fencing, housing the Centro. 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 centro´s 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 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, and his hair was 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.”
I nodded. “Use this to get us in without the check,” I said, and handed him another, slightly smaller wad of the coffee-colored notes.
I saw his face drifting away from the idea.
“But that´s fine, if you don´t want the cash,” I said.
I shook his head. “No, no. Está bien,” he said. “Get in.”
I walked to the rear double doors and pulled the handle upward, a large click opened the door and I climbed in. It was refrigerated, and full of boxes of frozen produce. French fries, bread rolls, canapé shells. I shut the door, I walked through the food and climbed to the back where a small window connected the cabin with my part and knocked it.
It opened and the young guy´s face appeared. “And the money?” he asked. And I threw the wad of cash to him. His face lit up and he opened up the central compartment of the cab and threw it in, after a little look at the notes.
I owed my fortune to the blindness money inflicts upon us. He had barely given my face a look. After he saw that wedge, he saw nothing else.
I settled down with my back to the cabin wall and waited. The truck started to move.
The shudder of the truck told me we were stop-starting toward the security checkpoint. I slumped down behind the last boxes and the cold began to burn the parts of my face where the skin only stretched across the bones, and the knuckles too. I stayed still. The truck moved and stopped. Moved and stopped. Moved and stopped. And then I heard voices. The security guard talking to my bribed driver, although I could make out nothing. I heard the mumble and then steps outside, around the back of the van, and the door handle started to rattle.
Maybe I should have waited to give the money at the end. It was too late now. I couldn´t get arrested now. Not now. Too damn early.
A glowing crack flooded the space with sunlight and kept still. No-one got up into the cab. No-one spoke. I waited. It was -3 degrees and my teeth were chattering, and I prayed it wasn´t as loud as it was in my head. From outside I heard the bustle of the other lanes of traffic. Horns honking with impatience.
Finally, “está bien, pasale” and the doors shut again, and the truck started its engine. And we moved.
Suddenly, the little window to the driver´s cab knocked, and I got up. It slid open and the young man shouted, in Spanish, “Stay down.”
I thanked him, and waited. The truck´s engine stayed steady and only ebbed and revved as my ride took the turns and pauses necessary to get to the loading bay of the Centro. Eventually, I heard more voices, but the door didn´t open again until my friend opened it and gave me the all clear.
I got up from my hiding place, chilled to the bone, walked to the doors and jumped down.
We were in a dimly lit underground space. Just concrete pillars and dry concrete walls, about the size of two football pitches. It was dank and deserted, like the car park of an unpopular shopping mall. The supplier loading bay. There were doors every ten meters, and other vans dotted around with people delivering goods in and out of them. The light was sterile white. Economy bulbs bought in bulk and at extra industrial size.
The kid looked at me in the light.
“I know you,” he said.
But I looked straight at him and shook my head, “no you don´t. Which door leads inside?”
He looked at me with a suspicious glare, but I guess he remembered the six month´s salary I had paid him and span on his heel, hummed his thinking, and pointed at one door about fifty meters away.
“That one leads to the backstage.”
I thanked him, and walked away.
From behind me, I heard him call again “I know you, man.”
I turned quickly. “No you don´t,” and I turned and didn´t wait for his answer.
I got to the door he had shown me and twisted the fake gold spherical handle and pushed it, and walked through.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I found myself in a gloomy, backstage corridor, facing outward from the curve of the wall.
The space was lit by eco-fluorescent tubes, and made dim for it. I could make out the thin, built-to-wear gray and terracotta-colored diamond patterned carpet. The walls were blank. The roof was uncovered industrial steel, hanging lights, and wiring. There was no sign of life. I took off Polo´s jacket and hat and left them piled on the side.
I walked down the corridor. I had the time right. Esteban was here. He would be in plain sight.
The backstage of the conference center, dingy and muggy, served me well. I met the first people within two minutes, two government type organizers, busy making work for themselves, walking side by side deep in discussion, looking at an iPad one of them held, leaning into each other. I passed them with ease. They barely offered a glance. Next, a cleaning lady dressed in a generic plaid apron, solemn and quiet, wheeling along her cleaning trolley, full of cheap chemicals, and mops. I kept on.
Each time I found a door, I checked the handle quickly and firmly. But none were unlocked.
I moved onward.
As the corridor curved, the doors ran out so I walked a little quicker. Not too fast but enough not to be noticed and pick up the pace.
And then, out of the gloom, came a group of about ten people. I went to the side to allow them to pass. They were young suited people, sharp and busy looking. Although I avoided their glances, I had to greet them, just to appear normal. The first few were too engaged in their own conversations to care about me, but the ones in the middle and at the back caught my gaze full on. A woman looked at me in the eyes, then her colleague, a guy in his late twenties, then another guy the same age. But nothing registered on the outer shell. They were about to pass when the last guy, an older guy, looked right at me, and I saw recognition register on his features. Confusion at first, then his mouth fell open. He raised his arm at me but he seemed lost for words.
He mouthed
the words.
“Es él.”
It´s him.
I smiled and walked past, hoping my features hadn´t registered enough.
But from behind me, came a shout.
Some commotion. I kept walking, but fast, waiting for a door. Anything. I walked around the curved corridor and went into a jog. The shouts came from behind. I was made. I started to run, and the din went quieter behind me. Then the doors started again. I went to the first, locked.
The second, the same.
The voices behind me got more frantic. Collecting, trying to reach me. It was between them catching me and getting security, and me finding the main stage, with my target on it.
Then I heard someone shout, “Stop him. Stop him,” in Spanish.
I sped up to a run, trying every door that I came to. After the eighth I lost hope but kept trying, the shouting getting louder behind me all the time. Locked.
Locked.
Locked.
Locked.
And then, I got one. The handle was stiff, but I twisted it hard, and it opened.
I fell into an empty office and I stood and gathered myself and shut the door, locked the button in the center of the handle and stayed still. The furniture inside the space was temporary and cheap. The desks and tables were full of papers, copies, and empty cups of coffee. The air smelt of old coffee too. There were mirrors on the walls and the walls were a matte black. Everything was painted black. There was another door at the other end, I ran to it and dived through.
I came into a second office, this time double the size. Same black unfinished walls, same durable carpet under foot. I ran through the room and found three more doors. I grabbed the central one and went through. I came into a much larger space, and noise filled my ears. Noise from the stage. The conference was close. The space was black again but this time had a ceiling at least 30 meters high. There were scaffolding structures let aside and equipment and things scattered everywhere. I side stepped away from the door, and leant against the wall with my back and slumped to a squat. Then I waited.
