"Well G.o.d bless America and pa.s.s the apple pie," I said, and took a swing at him.

He blocked the blow easily, and sent a devastating punch my way. I closed my eyes and waited for impact, savoring in advance the coming stars. They never came. I peeked. His fist hovered in midair inches from my nose.

A crunching sound of broken bone. The man howled in pain. His forearm bent over the bar at an unnatural angle.

"Bye-bye," a new voice said, and a man took the general's barstool. He looked far too young and blond and happy to be sitting there in that filthy bar, chuckling to himself as the marine limped from the room, clutching his broken arm to his chest.

"The f.u.c.k are you doing?" I shouted over the noise of the bar.

"Saving your a.s.s by the looks of things," he said. "Name's Pitt. Buy you a drink?" To the barman: "Dos cervezas, por favor."

"Make mine a bottle of pisco," I hollered. "And who are you to get involved?"

Pitt cracked his knuckles. "That guy was going to beat you up."

"Yes. I know. That was the point?"

The pisco came. Pitt poured me a shot. I took the bottle and drained it in one long swallow.

"Thirsty," he said, and rested his chin on his fist. "You want another or should I just tape a 'Rob Me' sign to your forehead?"

"f.u.c.k off, will you?" I said. "You've already ruined my evening." I looked around the room. None of the other crew off the USS a.s.swipe seemed incline to brawl. Not with Pitt at my side. I slid off my barstool, feeling unsteady. "Now I'll have to go somewhere else to get beaten up."

Pitt drank his beer and laughed. "You are weird, dude. Why on earth do you want to get beaten up?"

My liquor tolerance was pretty high but even I was struggling to process an entire bottle of pisco. The stuff was raw local brandy, as nasty as it gets. I held on to the bar to steady myself. "Because I deserve it," I said to a puddle of beer on the bar. I sat down and covered my face with my hands.

He slapped me on the back. "What can you possibly have done to deserve that?"

So I told him. I tell everyone. I love to watch their faces change. The horror when they hear what I have done.

When I was finished, he just laughed. "Dude," he said, "that's nothing. Don't be such a f.u.c.king wuss. How can you feel guilty about something as stupid as that?"

The world was spinning now. "Wouldn't you?" I managed to croak. I reached for my soap dish to righten the good ship Horsie.

"I do that kind of s.h.i.t before breakfast sometimes," he said. "And I sleep like a baby. Um, sorry," he said, catching my expression of pain. "You know what I mean."

"Tell me about it," I said, snorting cocaine up my nose until my septum bled. "Tell me all about your pre-breakfast guilt-free ways."

"I'm CIA," he said breezily. "An enforcer. Part of the Dissent Suppression Unit."

"And I'm the King of Spain. I dub thee, Sir Stranger Who Must Now f.u.c.k Off." And I collapsed into giggles.

He pinched my neck. A sharp pain shot down my spine. "I kill people for a living, d.i.c.kwad," he said. "You hear about the murders in Iquitos last week?"

I squawked an affirmative, his hand still on my neck.

"That was me. Strangled three dissidents with their own intestines. Roasted their nuts over an open fire. They were tasty." His smacked his lips close to mine. "f.u.c.king villagers didn't want us drilling for oil. Thought it might ruin their precious f.u.c.king habitat. Guess what?" He laughed beer smell in my face. "We run this country. We don't put up with that s.h.i.t from n.o.body. You get in our way, you object to our policy, you protest our raping your country for money? Dead. Tortured. Disappeared."

He let go of my neck, and I sat back, rubbing my spine.

"Decapitate dissent," he said. "That's what I do. Literally. Kill the leaders, and the sheep will follow." He ticked off on his fingers. "Union organizers. Indigenous leaders. Hoity-toity academics who can't be blackmailed or bullied. Artists. Writers. Opposition politicians. We make them go away." He thumped his chest. "And I am a one-man disappearing team. I will kill, torture, maim, rape, sodomize, cannibalize and terrorize until you f.u.c.king obey, you stupid f.u.c.king Peruvians." He leaned back in his chair with a smile. He drank his beer, then held it to his cheek and grinned broadly. "But after a hard day's work, it's time for an ice-cold Bud. Don't you agree?"

I stared at him. It was bizarre. This golden boy, this Greek G.o.d spewing such filth...he didn't look like he was joking. "If that's the case, how come you're telling me all this? Isn't that, you know, like, cla.s.sified?"

"You wearing a wire?"

"No."

"Good. Because if you were I'd have to kill you." He swigged his beer and grinned again.

From the depths of my soul came a reply: "You are either a liar or a psychopath."

He swallowed suds and wagged a finger. "Sociopath, actually. Company shrink said so."

Turned out he wasn't a liar.

THREE.

The sign said No Smoking. I lit a cigarette.

Two blue leather sofas glistened at right angles in the waiting room. Paintings of mountains long since gouged flat regarded me mournfully from the wall. Above them blazoned the coat of arms of Anglo-Dutch Mining, Ltd.: two unicorns rampant over a field of poppies. Four clocks ticked in unison, alerting the visitor to the current hour in London, Johannesburg, Melbourne and Lima.

Behind the yacht of a reception desk, its skipper, a twenty-something albino with her hair in a bun, tapped daintily at a computer. Her unfettered nipples ogled me through a tight red twinset. She glanced up from time to time, caught me staring at her. Those pink eyes made me think of rats. She'd greeted me with a polite "buenos dias," but switched to English when she heard my gringo accent. "Hey, you a Merkan?" she tw.a.n.ged. The South Florida accent made me want to hurl. "How's it going? How do you like Peru?" She giggled. "Isn't it just wonderful down here?"

Santana's "American Woman" played in my head on endless loop. I blew smoke at the ceiling.

"You need to put that out." She snapped her pale fingers at the sign.

The imperial finger snap made me want to wrench her arm from its socket and beat her over the head with it. My first wife used to do the same. f.u.c.k her. And f.u.c.k her whole half of the species, especially the American ones.

At our son's second birthday party Mrs. Bossy had snapped her fingers in my face and announced in front of all the company that she was divorcing me and suing for child support. Oh-and that the child wasn't mine, but my best friend Larry's.

"Child support?" I'd asked my lawyer. "Is she joking?"

"Nope," he'd said with a chuckle. "According to the law, you got two years to order a paternity test. After that, doesn't matter if it's yours or not." He aimed his pencil at my head. "You're on the line for the next sixteen years, bucko."

I heaved myself from my seat with a squish of leather and approached the yacht, cigarette between my lips. Ash dribbled onto the spotless marble. I exhaled smoke through my nose.

"I can suck myself off," I said. "Wanna see?"

"I'm sorry?"

You better be, c.u.n.t, I thought. You and all your kind.

"I need to see Sergio. You want to see me do it. Get your girlfriends, make some popcorn."

"What? I-no." Her ghostly face flushed crimson. "Are you crazy? I told you, Mr. Salazar is in a-"

"You'll regret it if you don't." I unzipped my jeans, tooth by tooth. The noise echoed in the sterile waiting room.

She closed her mouth. Glanced at my crotch. Picked up the phone.

f.u.c.king s.l.u.t.

That morning I sat in bed for a long while, smoking cigarettes. Lynn had spent the night. A first. Went to great lengths to change my mind. Didn't even complain when the c.o.c.kroaches crawled into bed with us. When I woke up screaming, rats clawing at a baby in my arms, she hushed me, stroked my face, held me against a silicon breast. I wondered what she'd tell her husband. I spent the night f.u.c.king your former agent's brains out. Why? So he'd help me find my son. You remember him. Pitt?

Pitt, I thought. G.o.dd.a.m.n Pitt. Only friend I'd had down here in Lima. Or thought I had. Serves him right. After what he did? No. He can get f.u.c.ked.

I extinguished the cigarette against my left nipple. Lit another. "End the guilt." That's what the email had said. Pitt had found a way to end the guilt. Pitt! With a conscience! Just the idea made me want to laugh.

He was everything I hated in the world. So why did I love him so much? Even now, after he betrayed me. How can you love someone you hate?

Maybe because, compared to him, I felt like a good person. He was a reminder that there were worse people in the world than myself. Truth be told I was jealous of his lack of conscience. What freedom he must feel! Not to be weighed down by ten tons of baggage like me.

Why had a murderous sociopath like Pitt wanted to hang around a sad sack of s.h.i.t like me? G.o.d only knew. A source for his c.o.ke, I suppose. Although cocaine wasn't exactly hard to come by in Peru. h.e.l.l, the country produced more of the stuff nowadays than Colombia did. Pitt had used me, of course. Of course. On my first, last and only mission for the CIA, thank G.o.d. But I could think of a dozen other people with the right access for that op. Why did he pick me?

I guess I was his audience. He liked to get high before going on a killing spree, murdering dissidents and protestors, whatever he did for a living. Then he'd fly into town and we'd go out drinking and whoring. He'd tell me about his latest atrocities.

His stories always made me feel better.

Pitt was one sick, twisted f.u.c.k. If his conscience had suddenly clicked on, then he was staggering around with a h.e.l.luva load.

I burned another cigarette into the multilayered scar that covered my body. Winced in joy at the pain. I could still smell Lynn's aging p.u.s.s.y in the sheets. The crusty spot where we'd ground together scratched against my thigh. I touched the divot in the lumpy pillow at my side.

No. I had to find Pitt. Had to find out what he meant by "end the guilt." But not for her. For me. I wanted to know what he meant.

Had to know.

The gla.s.s security door clicked open. A bulldozer of a Latino plowed into the waiting room. He wore a sky-blue bulletproof vest over flowing robes of yellow and scarlet, like Buddhist monks wear in Tibet. One arm rested on the shotgun draped across his chest. His head gleamed from a recent encounter with a razor, and he stank of cheap aftershave.

He put his palms together, bowed to me. "Shanti," he said. "Peace." He straightened up and his voice coa.r.s.ened. "You got something to say?"

"To Sergio, yes."

"Shanti," he said again. "We are one. Mr. Salazar and me."

"And I. One what?"

"He see what I see. Hear what I hear."

"Sees what you see. Hears what you hear." I ground out my cigarette on the marble countertop. "And if that's the case, he must be blind, deaf and stupid. C'mon."

I held out my arms and spread my legs. The guard's lips puckered. He swung a fist at my face. I flinched. He patted my cheek. Laughed.

"It is lucky for you that I am a pacifist." His hands fondled me in all the wrong places. "What is this?"

He held up a rusty hammer with a rubber grip. I'd filched it from the butcher's shop downstairs and washed the blood off. I'd seen them using it the day before to make their cat'n'dog patties.

"A gift for Sergio," I said. "Something I thought he might like."

The man grinned, but did not return the hammer. He gripped it low at his side, tense, as though expecting me to make a move. The receptionist buzzed the security door. The bulldozer del dia charged through, held the door open for me.

"Nice meeting you," the receptionist said. She undid her hair, let it fall to her chest. Her nipples peeked through the cascade of white.

"Nice t.i.ts," I said.

She laughed. "Let me know, I'll get the popcorn ready." She slid a business card across the counter.

I picked up the card. Her h.o.r.n.y pink rat's eyes devoured my disgusting exterior. When did I last take a shower? Much less wash my clothes. Why would any woman want to be with me, unless I paid her? For that matter, why did Lynn? Beat the h.e.l.l out of me. I tore the card in half, then half again, and let the pieces flutter to the floor.

"You do that," I said.

The gla.s.s door clicked shut. The air quality inside the office was good. Too good. My lungs didn't know what to do. I coughed, tasted Lima traffic on my tongue. I spat on a plastic plant.

"Wait here." My escort pointed to an unoccupied cubicle. He fiddled with a security panel and disappeared through a door.

I sat down. How long had it been since I'd last seen Sergio? Couple of months? No. Longer. More recent than my last shower, anyway. Our paths had crossed a couple of times, but he was more Pitt's friend than mine. That, and Pitt's boss. At least the one Pitt told people about.

Sergio's a nothing. A n.o.body. My dad and I run this country. And we run Anglo-Dutch Mining, too.

Blue canvas fuzz lined the wall. In nearby cubicles phones rang. Bodiless voices answered. Unseen fingers typed on unseen keyboards. Ambitious tongues, sharpened for the kill, slurped on half-empty mugs of coffee. I clutched my stomach, suddenly nauseous.

Cubicle slavery, American-style. You couldn't escape it, no matter how far you flew. My first wife had tried to keep me in my job. When I refused to pay child support, she garnished my paycheck. I quit my job. Withdrew all my cash. Strapped it to my thighs, bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires. They stopped me at the airport and took my pa.s.sport. Confiscated the money, gave it to her and her brat.

I would be a slave to no man. And no f.u.c.king woman, either. So I did what anyone would have done in my situation. I fled across the Rio Grande into Mexico. Pa.s.sed wetbacks going north. "Are you crazy?" I shouted. "Go home! Freedom lies the other way!" But they ignored me, and plodded onward to their new careers as America's de facto slaves.

I hitchhiked my way south, teaching English along the way. Picked up a fake pa.s.sport, good enough to get me through Central America. Somehow wound up in Peru.

I met Kate. Things were looking up. Life was getting good again. We had a dream and we were building it, piece by piece. Until the evil G.o.d who runs the universe intervened, and decided I'd had my fill of happiness.

A man in polyester pants walked by, humming to himself. He propped a cardboard box on one hip, tapped a security code into a nearby panel and walked through the same door as the bulldozer. I could stand no more of this office bondage. Minions, be d.a.m.ned! I caught the door before it shut, pushed my way into the room.

Fifteen men in tailored suits looked up from their laptops. Their pasty faces drooped, puffy with excess. I recognized three of them from the brothel circuit. Gla.s.ses and watches and tie pins glittered under the fluorescent lights, battle regalia of the modern warrior.

The man with the cardboard box turned, opened his mouth and put the box down in midair. The box fell, exploding in a shower of manila folders. He scrambled to pick them up. Bulldozer grabbed me by the collar of my dirty brown sweater. I spotted Sergio at the end of the conference table. His dark Andean complexion and gray ponytail were hard to miss.

"Sergio!" I waved. "So good to see you again!"

"You know this man?" asked a portly gent in a three-piece suit, caressing his pinstripes.