Free The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller by J. M. Porup Page A

patting and slapping, and I knew Paco’s magic hands were at work, even as he ran.
    We didn’t stop until we got to the sea. We ran the length of Avenida Larco, dashed down the stairs into Larco Mar, the cliff-side shopping mall for tourists and Lima’s pathetically
petite bourgeoisie.
I slowed to a walk, hopped the escalator downstairs to the cinema. I bought two tickets to a Hollywood blockbuster whose poster of an overpaid movie actor holding a gun promised boredom. I handed a ticket to Paco. Together we entered the darkened theater.
    The movie was already halfway along. A faked explosion filled the screen. Cars squealed. I yawned. Paco pulled wallets from his various pockets, siphoned the cash and dropped the remainder on the sticky floor.
    “What’s going on, Paco?”
    He grinned. “I could also ask you that.” His teeth gleamed white in the dark theater.
    “Why were you following me?”
    “Shh!” A gringo tourist in a blue denim shirt turned around, finger to his lips.
    Paco lowered his voice. “They pay me. That is why I want talk to you,
amigo.”
    “They
are
paying you. You want
to
talk to me. Fine. Who? Why?”
    “Tell them where you go. What you do. They pay in dollars. Much money.”
    “A
lot
of money.”
    He nodded, peering skyward at a pair of twenty-foot-tall, surgically crafted Hollywood breasts. “A lot.”
    A piece of popcorn missed my face by inches. “Hey asshole, shut up already.”
    “What do they look like?” I asked.
    “A gringo.” Paco shifted in his seat. “You know.
Rubio.”
    “We all look alike.” I sighed.
Rubio
literally meant “blond.” But in practice it meant anyone with hair that wasn’t Latino black. My dark brown hair was, to Paco,
rubio.
    “Since when?” I asked him.
    “Last week.”
    “When you meeting next?”
    Paco grinned. “You mean, ‘when
are
you meeting next,’ right,
profesor?”
    A fat blob of an American stood, blocking the screen. He slobbered down at me, his words slurred by the quantity of fat dangling from his chin. “Some of us are on vacation.”
    I pulled a switchblade from my pocket. I flicked open the knife one-handed, stabbed him in the nipple. “Well I’m not.”
    Out in the midday gloom of Lima, we hurled ourselves into a passing bus.
    “Where to next, boss?”
    “Home. Tag along?”
    “You do not mind?”
    I ruffled his hair and sighed. “I’ll let you know when I do.”
     
    Volcanic Volunteers’ trifold brochure contained no more information than I expected. Pictures of happy brown children frolicking next to high-altitude mud-brick houses, vistas of the Andes in the background. Promises of personal fulfillment for the foreign volunteer, all for the low, low price of just two thousand dollars per week.
    A picture of a lake filled the middle inside third of the trifold. I stared at it. I knew that lake. Knew it too well. The island in the distance, too. I swatted the memory aside, but it bounced back, punched me in the jaw like an angry midget with a two-by-four.
    I had to go there. Find the volunteers. Find them, find Kate. Find Kate, find Pitt. Find Pitt…and then? Then what? I had no idea. All I knew was I felt driven. After a year of wallowing in shit I had something to hold on to, a life preserver, and I wasn’t going to let it go. Even if it meant having to dredge up the past and face Kate again.
    I needed a drink. There are some things no man was ever meant to suffer. Was never meant to bear. I fingered the soap dish in my pocket, left it there. Not here on the bus. Getting caught would mean a hefty bribe I couldn’t pay, and a long flight back to the States. I shuddered just thinking about it. Better death than that.
    I folded the brochure into a tight square, and shoved it deep into my pocket.
     
    I left Paco on the steps of a crumbling
chifa
joint across the street from my apartment. He promised to watch me real good. I didn’t have the heart to explain that “good” was not an adverb.
    I climbed the