Hunters Run Page 0,80

us informed on what's going down. And no one suspects him because who the fuck would believe it? He's a thug. Everyone knows the governor wants him hanged. No one thinks it's all bullshit and he's calling us every Sunday like he's our fucking girlfriend."

"I'm not a snitch."

"Not saying you are," Ramon said. "What I'm saying is this: S?o Paulo? It doesn't have laws. It has cops. I'm one of them, and you helped me. Whatever happened at the El Rey, it was someone else. That way we're square."

"How do you know I'm not innocent? What if I really didn't do it?"

"If you didn't do it, then I'm gypping you big-time," Ramon said, and grinned. His twin wavered for a moment, then a smile plucked at his mouth too. The knife blade lowered. The man stepped back.

"It's my knife. I'm keeping it. It's mine."

"You want to hold on to it, that's cool," Ramon said, trying to sound reassuring, the way cops did when they were talking you down. He'd heard the tone a few times, and it wasn't hard to fake. "I understand you'd want to keep the weapon. That's not a problem. After all, we're just two guys on the run from a bunch of goddamn aliens, right? Doesn't matter which one of us has the knife, because we're on the same side."

"If you fuck me over ..." the man said, and left the threat hanging. Because, Ramon thought, really, a cop decides to break his word to you, exactly what could you do? Take him to a judge and see who got believed?

"If I start fucking people over, Johnny Joe and all the other pendejos like him will lose their shit," Ramon said. Grave. Authoritative. Like a cop. "It ain't worth it. I tell you you're clean, man. That makes you clean. But any reward we get for turning in those alien fucks, we split it. You and me. Right down the middle."

"Fuck that," the man said. "I saved your ass. You were walking bait. I get three quarters."

Ramon felt his belly loosen. He was clear. The crisis was gone, and nothing left but a little posing and haggling. "Sixty-forty," he said. "And you didn't kill anyone. Ever."

"I'm getting gypped," the man said.

"So's everyone. We're the cops, remember?" Ramon said, then smiled. The other man coughed out an incredulous laugh, then smiled himself. "You want to start getting these leaves in place, so we can get out of here and back to someplace they've got plumbing?"

"Fucking cops," the man said, but now it was a joke. The man was half-drunk with relief. And why shouldn't he be? Ramon had just forgiven him his sins.

They worked until the light failed. The little lean-to was half-ready; a bed of leaves made and the covering laid down with the leaves arranged in overlapping rows so that any rain would run down the top and into the water instead of dripping through. Ramon called the halt; his twin would have kept going all night, he guessed, just to prove something. And yet, as they walked the short path back to their little camp, he could tell that the relationship had changed. Clueless banker lost in the wild was one thing. Policeman and granter of pardons was another beast entirely. Ramon built a small fire and the other man unloaded a double handful of sug beetles, suicide nuts, and the bright green berries that Ramon had never found named in the planet's taxonomies and that tasted like cheap white wine and pears. It wasn't a feast, but it tasted good. Afterward, Ramon drank water until his belly felt full. He'd have to piss in the middle of the night, but for the moment, it fooled his body into feeling sated.

His twin lay back beside the fire. Ramon saw the man's fingers twitching, and knew he was wishing he had a cigarette. The thought immediately made him want one too. How long, he wondered, before the nicotine stains grew back, yellowing his fingers and teeth? How long before the teasing fan dance of identities he was doing for the other man stopped working and the truth came out? Maybe the right thing was to leave now, go into the wild and avoid his twin, the governor, the police, and the Enye entirely.

He'd thought about living off the land many times before. The idea of fading away into the forest had seemed more plausible when it was a fantasy, or else something he could do