chapter 2
The grown-up Ramón Garcia stood on the floor of the warehouse in the focus of a solitary worklight and scanned the twisted shadows beneath the roof like a predator, but he did not sense his prey. Frustrated, he slowly whirled around with his arms outstretched until his coat splayed wide, and its hem and shoulders flared as if on fire. “Pedro!” Ramón called out. “Why do you hide, amigo? Didn’t you want to meet me on your home ground, such as it is?”
The pallets on the warehouse floor were arranged in squares like the blocks of a bayside shanty town, with wooden crates and curious green cardboard boxes haphazardly stacked like rows of tenements between the aisles. Garcia wiped his finger through the grit on a packing case, rolled the dust into a ball between his fingertips, and then flicked it into the dark.
“After all,” Ramón continued. “I received your little…,” he began to say, then paused, took a deep breath, chose his next few words carefully, and concluded, “…’calling card.’
“I had just bought that yacht. It was mine. You remember, Pedro? I always said I would be captain of a ship someday. It was beautiful. I called it El Bandera Pirata. Now its debris is just aquarium toys for the fishes.” Ramón’s knuckles turned white and his whole fist quivered. “Good thing for me that I had to unexpectedly return to shore, eh, Pedro?”
Garcia waited a long while for a reply, but the only sound he heard was a soft coo-cooing emanating from somewhere amongst the rafters. “Are there pigeons nesting under the roof,” he wondered to himself, “or is that sound from something else?”
Garcia watched his henchmen sweep between the aisles of the warehouse the way the tide, scummed with flotsam, sweeps between seashells on the shore. The henchmen were big men, merciless men. They wore expensive suits or copious leather jackets that afforded plenty of room to conceal shoulder holsters, Uzis, and MAC-10s. Their faces were as grim as death masks.
One man, a lieutenant named Smead who had a build like a wrestler and a voice like the thud of a blackjack, was clearly in charge. He stepped into the pool of light surrounding his boss and said, “The building is surrounded, capitan. There’s no way Ramirez can get out.” Garcia had circled his men around the warehouse like a hangman’s noose strung from a halyard, and he was slowly, steadily, drawing the rope tight around the neck of Pedro Ramirez.
Garcia cocked his head toward Smead so that only the glint of his earring could be seen beneath his wide hat brim. “Make sure you do catch him, Mr. Smead. But remind your men—very carefully—that Ramirez is not to be killed! He is to be breathing when he is brought to me.”
Garcia’s flamboyant manner and ruthless control gave all who met him the impression that he was somehow related to the grand padrones of old, who had descended from a long line of aristocracy that reigned like kings and ruled with an iron fist. It would never occur to anyone who met him now, for the first time, that instead of rebelling against the way he was treated in the vicious slums of Bogota, Colombia, Ramón Garcia had grown up to embrace, emulate, and escalate the cruelty of the very people who had exploited him. No one would suspect except someone who had also grown up in those same barrios. No one except a childhood friend.
“I, and I alone, will mete out his punishment,” Garcia said. “I have plans for Pedro Ramirez. And any man who would steal that from me will pay me back by suffering what I have planned for him.”
Smead, the bigger, stronger man, felt his insides turn to water at the thought of what Garcia called “plans.”
“Hoo-hoo, Tink’! Hoo-hoo! I’ve got him just where I want him!” Pedro said, as he crouched on a catwalk, apparently not noticing he was outnumbered twenty-four to one, while he casually ate imaginary fruit. Cheerfully, he hooted like some exotic bird.
Suddenly, Pedro made a little burp. “Sorry about that Tink’,” he said apologetically. He scrutinized his imaginary fruit for a while and finally concluded, “It must have been something I ate.” Then he chuckled proudly at his own cleverness.
“Tick-a-tock! Tick-a-tock! Time’s running out for him, Tink’,” Pedro said to the sprite who wasn’t there. “Just watch. I’ll beat him and all his pirate crew!”
Tink’ didn’t answer.
In the darkness beyond the edge of the catwalk, floating like leaves on the wind, there appeared the vision of his wife and their little Lost Boy. Their hair was polished jet, their skin was the color of tanned leather, and they shared the roundness of their cheeks and the fear in their eyes. Pedro did not wonder how they could drift on thin air. It was obvious: Tink’ must have sprinkled them with pixie dust.
“Pedro, mi corazón,” the woman said, her dark eyes glistening with tears, “don’t try to fight Ramón. You can’t win.” And the Lost Boy cried, “Please, papá, please don’t go.”
Only Pedro could hear their words. These apparitions had come to him again and again these last few nights, pleading with him to not do what he felt he had to do. He could not muffle their cries, as much as they pained him, because he heard them not with his ears, but with his heart.
Pedro’s eyes began to mist uncontrollably, then filled to the brim. He turned away from his woman and their Lost Boy to hide his tears, to hide his sorrow, to hide his soul’s torment. He was a Man, not a Boy. He had to be strong, not weak; because evil men prey on the weak, and destroy the innocent.
Pedro squeezed his eyes tight, stopping by sheer force of will the tears that threatened to overflow from his eyes. Then he turned back to the visions and said, “I have to fight him! Ramón must be punished for what he did to you.
“How could you understand? You are both so beautiful and so good. It is not in you to feel what I feel. Ramón and I have been friends and rivals for ever and ever. And sometimes we forgot we might hurt the ones we loved. Now we are enemies. Now we both must pay for our crimes.”
Speaking to his loved ones with heartfelt sincerity; hoping to explain himself, hoping to explain everything; and using logic that made such perfect sense to him, he was sure it would convince anyone else; Pedro summarized his reason for waging a lopsided war with Ramón with just these eight profound, well-thought-out, perfect, words: “Coo-coo-jak-Kahhh! Jak-Kahhh Kah-Roooo.”
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