Trash - Andy Mulligan [33]
‘Why did the police take him? Where is he?’
‘The police killed him, sir. He was killed when they were questioning him.’
Gardo spoke softly, but the last words still fell like a blow. I saw the old man wince again and buckle, and Gardo stood back from him. He talked softly to the old man in his own language, and the man seemed to take yet more blows – I watched his old hands clench into fists. When the gentleman looked up, his face was wet and all I could see was pain.
We watched the old man shake. Something deep inside was shaking him, and there was nothing we could do but watch.
8
This is me, Raphael.
Sister Olivia was a good friend to us that day, and – for reasons that will be clear soon enough – we did not see her again to say thank-you. Writing this is a way to say thank-you, and one day maybe we will meet again and say it the way we need to say it.
I am so sorry for deceiving you, Sister.
I must talk about what we did while Gardo was in the jail – which was important. Then I will hand over to Rat, and write for him. You see, he and I decided to do something too, because it was hard sitting waiting and waiting all day, and I have not felt right since the police station – I cannot stay still, and everyone is looking at me always. We took the letter again, and stole off by the canal to a place nobody goes – a place I felt safe in, where you could see people coming. We squatted down and went over the newspaper cuttings again, me reading them out, all the way through. I read the letter too, which was coming apart in my hands by now. We both knew it almost by heart, since we’d been helping Gardo remember it – even the jumble of numbers stuck on at the end. Those names again, coming at us: José Angelico, the man killed in a police station. He felt like a brother to me now and I was dreaming about him. Gabriel Olondriz, his friend in Colva Prison. And now the fat senator, Zapanta … When I read the line about Senator Zapanta, Rat stopped me and made me re-read it: ‘If only you could go to Zapanta’s house now: it would make your soul sing.’
‘What’s that mean?’ said Rat.
I didn’t know. We’d all been saying that every time we read it: I don’t know, don’t know, don’t know.
‘Where’s his house, though? Maybe we should visit.’
‘Green Hills,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows that. Same place as José Angelico.’
The senator was a famous man, and everyone knew he had a place out there, just beyond the city, big as a town. Everyone knew he was rich and old, and I’d seen his fat face in the papers I hooked up, oh, so often – papers that more often than not wrapped up the stupp. Everyone knew he owned big pieces of the city – there are only five or six families who do out here, and his name was on streets, on a shopping mall in the fancy part of town, and in rising skyscrapers … He was a big man in every way. Vice-president for two years and his smiling face everywhere.
It was Rat’s idea to pay him a visit, and I liked the idea, if only to get me out of Behala.
‘Why would seeing the place make your soul sing?’ said Rat. We wondered and wondered, and agreed that taking a trip might tell us.
It seemed to me the problem would be the usual one. Money – for the bus. I’d given everything to my auntie, so I was broke again.
Rat said to me, ‘It’s OK. I got enough.’
I have to say I didn’t believe him. I said, ‘How have you got anything?’ I didn’t say it to be mean – it’s just that he’s about the poorest-looking boy on the dumpsite, so the idea he had more than a peso made me smile.
He smiled right back at me and shook his head. ‘I’ve got more than you think,’ he said slowly. ‘Come with me, and let’s see who’s poor.’
And that was when I came to learn a few things about Rat that I had never known and never asked about.
We cut back to the trail that takes you to the disused belt – belt number fourteen – checking the whole way that nobody was watching. I was still feeling scared whatever I did now – I could not shake it off, and I was always watching behind me, so when we went down the steps, and the rats flew