Seven Ways to Kill a Cat

OLD DEBTS

FAT FARÍAS LOOKS LIKE a sultan. He’s got a white turban of bandages round his head, he’s wearing his shirt open and he’s got bruises all the way down to his man boobs. His left arm is bandaged too. He’s using some filthy, snotty handkerchief as a sling. He’s sitting at a table like a lord. Serious. Talking to Rubén.

The bar is practically empty. The drunks in the barrio are loyal as cats. Farías only has to close up for one day and they’ve already found some other dive. It’ll be a while before they’re back. I see Chueco sitting in the far corner, staring into his glass. El Jetita is standing beside him, leaning down, hand on Chueco’s shoulder, whispering something in his ear, looking like an old friend, like a big brother giving his kid brother advice. What the fuck is going on here?

‘Hey, Gringo!’ Chueco calls over to me. ‘Over here! Pull up a chair!’

I’m threading my way between the tables when I see her, standing behind the bar where her father should be, pouring a glass of red wine for some old guy. She puts the cork back in the bottle and looks up. She’s beautiful. She’s got her hair pinned up and she’s wearing a dark apron. The thin shoulder straps emphasise her long, bare, slender neck. I feel like covering her in kisses. But Yani’s staring at me like she doesn’t recognise me. Makes sense, I suppose. After all, in here I’m a customer and she’s staff. Though, come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her working behind her old man’s bar before. I’ve seen her come in and ask him for money or chat to him, but I’ve never seen her serving.

I’m staring so hard I walk slap bang into the back of a chair and nearly rupture my balls. I swear under my breath. Yani tries not to laugh, but she carries on wiping down the counter, she doesn’t look over. When she finally lifts her head, I shoot her a look of sheer agony that makes her laugh out loud. I love the way her cheeks dimple. Her laugh makes us partners in crime just like it did last night. When she finally stops giggling, I give her an enquiring look, jerk my chin, raise my eyebrows. She frowns, glancing quickly in three different directions — the table where Fat Farías is chatting with Rubén, the table at the back where Chueco and El Jetita are huddled, and the old man at the bar she’s just been serving. El Negro Sosa is propping up the bar. I hadn’t noticed him. That means the whole gang is here. There’s some shit going down, and if someone doesn’t tell me what the fuck is going on and soon, I’m gone. I’ll be out of here before the tango starts, because I know my luck: I always wind up with the ugly best friend. If I have to tango, I’d rather do it with Yani.

Talking of ugly, El Negro Sosa is ugly as a hatful of arseholes: he’s dark with frizzy hair, a wide flat nose and eyes too far apart. He looks like a pig. He’s got lots of nicknames — Bighead, Fatso, Thirteen — but they all refer to the same thing. Truth is, the head on his shoulders is pretty normal, maybe even a bit small for his body. And there’s no fat on him. He’s hard and sinewy as a knotty wooden cudgel and just as quick to come down on someone. ‘Thirteen’ is the key. The inches he’s got swinging between his legs. The guy’s a fucking animal. Even the whores in the barrio are scared of him. He could split them in two. El Jetita calls him Sosa and treats him with respect. Sosa’s his deputy.

I pass the General himself as he heads towards the bar. ‘What are you doing, pibe?’ he whispers. ‘Sit down, I’ll be right back.’ I stare at him, but he just carries on walking. These are the first words El Jetita has ever said to me. It’s not like I expected a formal introduction. At least now everyone knows everyone. But he better not try giving me orders. Who the fuck does he take me for? One of his toy soldiers?

‘Hey …’ Chueco greets me as I slump into the seat next to him. ‘Qué onda?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine, I’m cool … you?’

‘Sweet. What are you drinking?’ he asks, waving Yani over.

‘Beer,’ I say good and loud so she can hear me.

Halfway to our table, Yani turns and heads back to the bar.

‘Give me a cigarette.’ Chueco’s on the scrounge again.

I give him one and spark one myself. Yani comes back with the beer. The glass is full to the brim, not a millimetre of foam. I give her a wink, but Chueco has to spoil it and says something gross. Yani curls her lips contemptuously, and turns on her heel.

‘Jesus Christ, get a load of the arse on that!’ Chueco says to me, staring at her as she walks away. I can hardly blame him: you can see her thong through her jeans.

‘So what’s going on, loco?’ I say, changing the subject.

El Jetita sits down and starts chatting quietly to Fat Farías and Rubén. One of the few 40-watt bulbs in the bar hangs directly over the three heads. The shrunken pool of light barely extends beyond the table. It looks like a conspiracy. El Jetita is talking fiercely and waving his hands. Rubén manages to get a word in from time to time and Fat Farías just nods. I’m feeling jumpy.

I look at Chueco and ask him again what’s going on.

‘We’re on a roll, that’s what’s going on, viejo,’ he says. ‘The lean times are behind us.’

‘What are you talking about, loco?’

‘I’m talking about business. The General there has offered us some work.’ He points his cigarette at El Jetita. ‘Both of us,’ he says as though he hadn’t made it clear already.

I take a long slug of beer, necking half the glass so I don’t have to answer, and take a couple of drags on my cigarette.

‘I told him about your mad skills with a strap and he was really impressed, so you’re in.’

He takes a last drag on his cigarette, stubs it in the ashtray and blows the smoke in my face with a triumphant smile.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he says arrogantly. ‘Anything for you.’

‘Oh, yeah, sorry …’ I play along. ‘Thanks, viejo! I’m really fucking grateful.’

‘What’s the fuck’s with you? Play your cards right, you might get your gat. You should be made up.’

‘Well, I’m not. I’m out of here. I don’t trust that fucker.’

‘You chicken, Gringo?’

‘Fuck you, Chueco, and fuck your mamá,’ I whisper through gritted teeth so as not to be overheard. ‘I’m not some punk bitch. I just don’t trust the guy. You retarded or just dumb?’

‘You can’t just dump me like this, Gringo.’

‘What? Like I owe you something?’ I cut him dead.

Chueco arches one eyebrow likes he’s the lead actor in some soap. And it’s true, I do owe him. I owe him for keeping his mouth shut. And I’ve been paying him back for years now. There’s no way to keep score with this shit, but recently I’m thinking that maybe I’ve paid my debt. I can’t be expected to put up with Chueco’s crap for ever just because once upon a time he kept shtum. Sooner or later, the debt’s got to be paid. Chueco’s taking advantage. And it’s not like it was a big deal.

It’s ancient history. When we were kids, we wanted to pull off something big, but the plan completely backfired. We’d bought half a key of weed to sell on to the kids in the barrio, but we didn’t even get two blocks before the Feds busted us. We were taken down the station. I got released the next day. Chueco spent three months on remand. He was the one carrying. They wanted to charge him with intent to supply, but because he was a minor — we were fourteen or fifteen at the time — they couldn’t make it stick, so in the end he got community service. They made him work for free in the nuthouse up in Zavaleta. Twelve months. From what he told me, he had to do pretty much everything, clean the toilets, hand out pills, sometimes even help hold down some psycho who freaked out. But he made a fair bit of cash selling weed up at the nuthouse.

I suppose he did save me, by keeping his mouth shut. The Feds had me press my fingers on the ink-pad and play the paper piano, then they let me go. Simple as. We were in it together, but the cops assumed he was the dealer. They thought I was trying to buy some weed off him. And since Chueco didn’t say much in his statement, nobody corrected the mistake.

‘What do you take me for?’ he said afterwards when I asked him why he hadn’t grassed me up. ‘How could I drop you in it? We’re socios, aren’t we?’

But the whole thing hardly made him a superhero. Back then, the Feds were in shit. A couple of months earlier, they’d given some kid a beat down just outside the barrio. They’d picked him up in a raid coming out of a concert and he was found the next day in a ditch beaten to fuck. The other rockers picked up in the raid told the judge the kid had freaked out and the Feds had worked him over good. Walter, the kid’s name was. It was in all the papers.

For a while after that the Federales treated us with kid gloves. Whenever they stopped us in the street they were almost polite. And that’s how it was when Chueco and I got picked up. Every cop was playing good cop. I remember they even read us our rights and reeled off a bunch of legal bullshit, habeas corpus, preventative measures and fuck knows what else. Like they needed to issue a special invitation to drag us down the station.

We were pretty lucky. They didn’t lay a finger on me, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t on Chueco either, so he can’t take much credit for keeping shtum. I’m guessing if they’d touched him, he’d have grassed me up like a shot. No cattle prods, no waterboarding, none of that shit. They didn’t even work us over old school.

Chueco must have come up with some bullshit story to save his ass. I’m sure the Feds didn’t believe a word of it. But luckily I didn’t figure in whatever story he cooked up. Since they couldn’t touch him, they had to take his word for it. So they let me go.

That was the end of the story, and the end of the whole Hollywood life of crime we’d dreamed up. We’d spent a month and a half scraping the cash together for that first half-kilo, robbing stereos downtown and selling them on to Rubén for a fraction of what they were worth so that way he’d buy the whole lot.

The first half-kilo was to get the operation up and running. We’d worked out the figures. We’d cut it up, sell it on and use the profit to buy a whole kilo, then two keys, then four and so on. We had it all worked out. Our initial investment would snowball. No one could stop it. But stop it they did. Before it even got started. And the snowball melted and trickled through our fingers.

While Chueco was banged up, I did some investigating. I wanted to find out who’d dropped us in it. Someone told me El Jetita had passed information to the police, and I believed it. He wasn’t about to let two kids with half a key fuck up his business. Back then, he had the monopoly on selling weed. Same as he does now, but now he’s also got a monopoly on coke, crack, paco, acid, pills … everything. Well, nearly everything — Rubén deals with the stolen cars and the gambling. Nobody handles the whores. They’re run by pimps from outside the barrio. Any working girls in the barrio are part-timers, freelance.

It wouldn’t surprise me to find out El Jetita and Rubén are partners. They’re pretty tight these days. And it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re trying to make a move on the whores in the area. It’s the only part of the business they don’t already control.

But the fact remains, El Jetita grassed us up. The normal thing for him to have done in that situation was threaten us. Shit, by the code of the barrio, he could have capped us if he wanted. Because in the barrio there’s no such thing as competition or a free market. Everyone round here knows that. But the backstabbing fucker had no right to do what he did do: turn us in to the Feds. Didn’t matter how polite the filth were being after the whole Walter case, they were still the filth.

I don’t know if the rumours got back to Chueco. I guess so. I never told him. Why try to pin the blame on someone when we were fucked anyway? But watching El Jetita playing nice with Chueco now, I can’t forget he was the one who grassed us up.

‘You do know who you’re dealing with?’ I say without warning.

He must have been following my train of thought because he answers with another question.

‘What? You think I’m sitting here sucking my thumb?’

‘Just saying …’

‘Yeah, I know what you’re saying. Why d’you think I asked you along?’

‘You tell me …’ I push him, but he just ignores it. He finishes his wine and watches Rubén and El Jetita wheedling Fat Farías. They’ve got him eating out of their hands. I’m guessing one of them is gently threatening and the other one’s offering protection. Same old, same old. Good cop, bad cop, just like the Feds.

Chueco finally comes closer to the table, covers his mouth with his hand and confides. ‘Because the first chance we get, we’ll turn him in to the filth,’ he whispers. ‘Because we’re going to stab him in the back, and hit him where it hurts — in his wallet. You don’t want payback for what he did to us?’

Truth is, I don’t. I got off lightly. But I’m not about to tell Chueco that. He’ll think I’m shit-scared, and it’s not that. I just don’t want any more grief. These guys are vicious bastards. You play them on their home ground, you lose. Better to give them a wide berth. El Jetita’s got his own code. He’s got the scars to prove it. The guy’s a fucking time bomb, there’s a bullet out there with his name on it and any day now he’s going to find it. I’d just rather he went looking for it on his own.

‘You’re playing with fire, you know that?’

‘We’re playing, loco. A debt’s a debt.’

Chueco leans back in his seat, narrows his eyes and stares at me. He’s waiting for an answer that’s not coming, and he knows why. What am I going to say? He’s one step ahead of me.

‘So what’s the story, then?’

‘How do I know? El Jetita’s going to come over for a little chat with us. Whatever he says, just say yes. Afterwards we’ll work out the details and put one over on him.’