you except misery and maybe a bullet in the back of your skull.”
73
Jack begrudgingly took Sands’s advice to grab some grub and headed for the restaurant he’d recommended. It was in the best part of town, which wasn’t saying much. But the place was clean and the steak and eggs were good—better than he’d hoped for, actually—but he couldn’t take his mind off his troubles or the hellscape outside. Whatever was going on in that bus with that kid wasn’t good, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it at the moment.
He thought about calling the American embassy on his cell phone, but besides the fact that he couldn’t get a cell signal up here, what could he say? “I saw a guy grab a kid and threaten him with a pistol?”
He had nothing to offer by way of clues or evidence or even a license plate number. And what could the State Department do anyway? This place was clearly beyond the reach of the local authorities. Maybe when he got back to Lima he could figure something out.
He felt like shit even thinking that, but he really was out of options. That poor kid was scared out of his mind, but for all Jack knew, he was a criminal being transported on a police bus.
Maybe Sands was right after all.
“You loser,” he muttered to himself as he dropped the fork onto his plate. He’d failed Liliana, and he’d failed that kid.
Nothing he could do about any of it. Yeah. He got that.
But they were just as screwed.
* * *
—
Jack headed back to the bar. The rain had slowed to a fine, watery mist. With any luck, it would stop soon.
Self-flagellation worked up a thirst in any man, especially one who thought he had the blood of innocents on his hands. He shook off the rain and stepped inside.
The same fat mestizo woman smiled at him again, her eyes hopeful and despairing all at once, but Jack ignored her. Her male companion was gone.
Jack changed his mind.
He approached her table. Her face brightened with surprise. Jack pulled out his wallet and tossed her a one-hundred-soles bill. She stood eagerly to service the big American in a room upstairs, but Jack waved her back down. “Take the night off, honey. On me.”
She didn’t understand a word. Confused, she glanced over at Sands behind the bar, his nose in a paperback. He shook his head in disbelief and muttered something in Quechua. She snatched up the money with a frown and stormed past Jack and out into the cool, damp night, angry or grateful, he couldn’t be sure.
Maybe both.
Shit. He couldn’t do anything right.
He ambled over to the bar and perched on a stool. He and Sands were the only two people in the joint.
“Beer or whiskey?” Sands asked, setting the book down. Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. A poodle and a pickup truck.
“Both.”
Sands smiled. “Good choice.”
Sands pulled bottles and glasses, and the two of them drank and talked about the finer points of football, landing on the Super Bowl prospects for Jack’s Redskins and Sands’s Chicago Bears. From football they turned to baseball, and as the booze kicked in, they took a sudden swerve into Steinbeck—the book was still on the bar—and then Hemingway, and somehow they landed on the Lake Poets, especially Wordsworth.
Then the conversation died, and the two men sat in a silent, shared grief for sins neither man confessed, mirrored images of each other—the past on one side, the future on the other.
A couple rounds later, two men pushed their way into the bar. They had the rolling gait and easy confidence of men who knew their way around trouble. One of them was the bearded man with the pistol from the bus. The other was taller, but Jack didn’t recognize him.
As they took their stools on the other end of the bar, both men greeted Sands with a silent nod. Jack saw pistols in their OWB holsters.
“¿Qué quieren beber?” Sands asked.
“Cerveza,” the shorter man said.
“Coming right up.”
Sands opened two bottles of beer and set them in front of his armed customers. He didn’t move. The three men locked eyes. Finally, the taller man glanced over at Jack and gave him the once-over, then turned back to Sands. Sands leaned on the bar close to the two men and whispered something in Spanish Jack couldn’t hear.
Sands stood erect again, then came back over to Jack.
“Another round?”
Jack lowered his voice. “That was the guy at the bus this afternoon.”