Trash - Andy Mulligan [2]
We were working together, and the bags were coming down – some of them already torn, some of them not – and that’s when I found a ‘special’. A special is a bag of trash, unsplit, from a rich area, and you always keep your eyes wide for one of them. I can remember even now what we got. Cigarette carton, with a cigarette inside – that’s a bonus. A zucchini that was fresh enough for stew, and then a load of beaten-up tin cans. A pen, probably no good, and pens are easy to come by, and some dry papers I could stick straight in my sack – then trash and trash, like old food and a broken mirror or something, and then, falling into my hand … I know I said you don’t find interesting things, but, OK – once in your life …
It fell into my hand: a small leather bag, zipped up tight and covered in coffee-grounds. Unzipping it, I found a wallet. Next to that, a folded-up map – and inside the map, a key. Gardo came right over, and we squatted there together, up on the hill. My fingers were trembling, because the wallet was fat. There were eleven hundred pesos inside, and that – let me tell you – is good money. A chicken costs one-eighty, a beer is fifteen. One hour in the video hall, twenty-five.
I sat there laughing and saying a prayer. Gardo was punching me, and I don’t mind telling you, we almost danced. I gave him five hundred, which was fair because I was the one who found it. Six hundred left for me. We looked to see what else there was, but it was just a few old papers, photos, and – interesting … an ID card. A little battered and creased, but you could make him out easy enough. A man, staring up at us, right into the camera, with those frightened eyes you always have when the camera flashes. Name? José Angelico. Age? Thirty-three years old, employed as a houseboy. Unmarried and living out somewhere called Green Hills – not a rich man, and that makes you sad. But what do you do? Find him in the city and say, ‘Mr Angelico, sir – we’d like to return your property’?
Two little photos of a girl in school dress. Hard to say how old, but I reckoned seven or eight, with long dark hair and beautiful eyes. Serious face, like Gardo’s – as if no one had told her to smile.
We looked at the key then. It had a little tag made of yellow plastic. There was a number on both sides: 101.
The map was just a map of the city.
I took it all away and slipped it down my shorts – then we kept on sorting. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself, or you can lose what you find. But I was excited. We were both excited, and we were right to be, because that bag changed everything. A long time later I would think to myself: Everyone needs a key.
With the right key, you can bust the door wide open. Because nobody’s going to open it for you.
3
Raphael still!
I’ll hand on to Gardo after this – after the evening.
You see, just after dark I realized I had something very, very, very important, because the police arrived and asked for it back.
You don’t see many police in Behala, because in a shanty you sort out your own problems. There’s not a lot to steal, and we don’t usually steal from each other – though it happens. We had a murder a few months ago, and the police came then. An old man killed his wife – slit her throat and left her bleeding down the walls to the shack underneath. By the time they came he’d run and we never heard whether they got him. We had four police cars come on an election visit, surrounding a man who wanted to be mayor – lights flashing and radios crackling away, because