Sergio removed a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his gray alpaca suit. He patted his forehead. "I can't be expected to know every homeless in Lima, now can I?"

Dipstick here's a useful puppet. Looks Indian enough to keep the locals happy. In private he takes orders like everyone else. h.e.l.lo, I'm Sergio! I'm a sock puppet! Will you be my friend?

The bulldozer tightened his grip and yanked me toward the door. "Shanti," he grunted. "This hurts me more than it does you."

"The bathhouse," I said, ignoring the guard's feverish cultic pantings. "You don't remember, Sergio? You and me, the three Brazilians? That amazing daisy chain?"

"My dear boy, this city is not the place to be telling lies." Sergio nodded to my escort, who reached for the door handle. "Libel law in Peru may not be very strong, it is true, but then neither is the criminal code." He put his hands together and cracked his knuckles. "You don't want to know how much Shanti here bench-presses."

"You mean that's his name?" I said, and regretted it. Shanti gripped me around the waist, lifted me off the ground and heaved me from the room. I clung to the door frame. "Alright," I said, "stop pretending you don't know me, and I'll stop pretending we're lovers."

"What is this about?" The portly gent stroked his waddle.

"The disappearance of Pitt Watters," I said. "And will you get this goon off me?" Shanti was even now prying my fingers one by one from the door frame, mumbling prayers of penance as he did so.

Sergio lifted his chin and the brutal bending stopped.

The man at his side said, "Pitt what? What who?" Fingers pinched loose neck fat now, measuring and testing its elasticity. The other men sat silently, watching me.

"Pitt Watters," I said again. "Your employee? The American amba.s.sador's son?"

I remember the first time I met Sergio. Pitt and I had arranged to go to a new strip club. Something New, Pitt called it, in his never-ending quest for novel and peculiar pleasures.

Life is pleasure, he'd hoot after his third hooker for the night. So what if it kills you? Quality, not quant.i.ty! Who wants to get old and wrinkly, anyway?

I got to the club first. A leather-clad dominatrix led me to a table, cracked a whip in the air to attract the waitress's attention.

The waitress came over, swinging her hips from side to side, her body encased from nipples to knees in latex. They didn't have any pisco, so I ordered a bottle of cheap Scotch and some ice. I shoved a wad of play money down her cleavage, told her to show my friends the table when they arrived. When she'd gone, I slipped into the bathroom and snorted c.o.ke off a urine-stained toilet seat.

I emerged to find Pitt in a manly embrace with a guy in a Phantom of the Opera mask. They a.s.sailed each other with mutual toasts of brotherly love: elbows wide, chins high, white teeth glistening, gla.s.ses sloshing with drink. The look of pure friendship Pitt beamed at his new companion made my stomach twist in acid convulsions. And what was with the mask?

"Horse!" Pitt yelled across the room, motioned me over. Half the a.s.sembled perverts turned to look. "Friend of mine!" he shouted in the man's ear, despite a lull in the music. His voice rang hollow in the cavernous s.p.a.ce.

"You say so. You Sergio?" I filled my gla.s.s, nibbled at my Scotch.

"Guilty as charged." He stabbed an open hand at my abdomen, tilted his head so that his voice drooled from his nostrils. "They call me The Silver Fox."

I took his hand. It was moist, like a tepid vanilla pudding. "Most people just call me an a.s.shole."

A brown finger flecked with long black hairs pointed at my head. Sergio's mouth opened in a soundless laugh.

"What's with the mask?" I asked.

He winked at me. "Let's just say, a man in my position does not wish to be identified."

I regarded him calmly. "Did your momma drop you on your head, or were you born that way?"

"What way?"

I dangled my Scotch from a limp wrist. "The mask only covers half your face?"

He laid a hand on my arm. "My friend, you would be surprised what this mask hides."

He was short and dark. Bolivian dark. Fifty-something, gray ponytail that lingered halfway down his back. A scar snaked across one hand, disappeared under the cuff of his white silk shirt. He was tie-less, and wore a wool suit, the same shade as his hair, b.u.t.toned tight against his paunch. He stooped as he sat, shoulders hunched, like a gnarled tree, warped by wind and rain, unable to stand straight.

Pitt caressed my shoulder, gave a squeeze. "Daddy bought him a pretty accent, don't you think?"

Sergio's nasal pa.s.sages echoed with the studied irreverence of Eton and Oxford. In his face you could barely note his father's blood, the millionaire Russian Jew who'd sired him off an itinerant Bolivian maid. The Russian took care of his flock of b.a.s.t.a.r.d children, Pitt had said, and Sergio had done well. As South American executive of Anglo-Dutch Mining, Sergio was considered by many the next logical choice for CEO of the South Africa-based mining conglomerate.

And Pitt, as chief engineer at Anglo-Dutch's lithium mine in Bolivia, was acknowledged as Sergio's heir apparent.

I looked around the club for faces I might know. When gringos meet in Latin dens of vice, there is instant camaraderie. Men whose names I didn't know, histories I didn't share, with whom I'd never exchanged a word, would look up from haggling with the girl at their side and lift a chin, an eyebrow, a salute of mutual appreciation that said: I found freedom too. Aren't we both glad we left?

But there were no other gringos here today, except for the three of us, so I communed with my liquid friend from Scotland. Pitt elbowed me in the ribs. Sergio was saying something.

"What do you do?"

"English teacher," I grunted.

Sergio stroked his upper lip. "I see."

"Do you?" I drained my gla.s.s, felt the liquor burn its way into my body.

"It's honest work."

"Honest?" I said. "I teach English to criminals so they can cheat tourists. You call that honest?"

Sergio's pudding hand wobbled, threatening to spill his drink. "Not for you to judge your clients, if what you offer them is honest."

BDSM was not my thing, and people who lie to themselves p.i.s.sed me off. What I do is wrong. Don't lie to me about my crimes. Don't lie to yourself. I tapped Pitt on the elbow, opened my mouth to suggest we move on, but just then the lights dimmed and a woman strode onto the stage.

Peruvian strip clubs aren't the same as American ones, with their no-touching bulls.h.i.t. Here that was the point. The stripping was merely advertising for the services offered out back, in the row of small rooms that invariably smelled of disinfectant, maintained by an army of maids. I often wondered about the maids. No matter how many brothels Pitt and I visited, banging away in adjacent rooms, the walls thin enough to hear each other come, I never saw the ones who cleaned up the mess.

"Who deserves some pain?" asked the MC, a thin, dark-skinned woman with bleach-blonde hair. She wore a tangerine bra, panty and garter set, and every pair of eyes gobbled up the sliver of fabric between her thighs. Her pear-shaped b.r.e.a.s.t.s hung pendulous, ripe fruit ready to be plucked. I settled into my chair. Perhaps I'd stick around, after all.

Two women dressed in leather unitards and black spike-heeled boots carried an apparatus onto the stage. It looked like a bizarre exercise machine. Wrist restraints hung from above, ankle restraints protruded from below. Another woman stepped from the shadows, her eyes masked. The whip she trailed in one hand curled around the points of her six-inch stiletto heels. She lifted her arm, cracked the whip against the stage floor. The sound of leather on wood echoed in the lofty s.p.a.ce. The audience shifted in their seats.

"No one here's been naughty?" purred the tangerine-pantied MC. "No one here's a-" and she breathed the words, almost a sigh, "-a bad boy?"

Sergio thrust his arm in the air, fingers spread wide, hand twitching, a first grader eager to please. Pick me! Pick me! A spotlight swung around from the ceiling, engulfed our table. I shielded my eyes with my palm.

Sergio stepped across Pitt's lap, walked down the aisle and hopped onto the stage. The light followed him. The MC smiled her kindergartner grin, helped him shrug the jacket from his shoulders. Two women in leather unitards laid light fingertips on his biceps, directed him where to stand. He faced the audience. They smiled and spun him back the other way. The audience t.i.ttered.

The woman on his right lowered the restraints from above, attached them to his wrists. The other nudged his feet apart and strapped in his ankles. They cranked the restraints tight, so that his arms and legs were fully extended, a man frozen in the middle of a jumping jack.

A crack of the whip made me flinch in my chair. The dominatrix stepped forward. She curled her fingers around the back of his shirt collar, looked over her shoulder at the audience, and grinned. With one fierce movement she ripped the garment from his body. The sleeves hung loose from his arms. The crowd murmured when they saw his back. White scar tissue formed deep rivulets from neck to waist. I stifled a gasp. It reminded me of looking in the bathroom mirror. At thousands of small white circles cratering my own flesh.

I leaned sideways toward Pitt. "This place wasn't your idea then."

"I thought you might enjoy it," he whispered.

"You thought what?"

Pitt gestured around at the club. "All your guilty conscience c.r.a.p. Isn't this what you're after?"

I sighed. I had tried to explain the concept of a conscience to him hundreds of times in the few months we had known each other, but had long since given up. "I don't want pleasure through pain," I said. "I want pain through pain. There's a difference?"

"I dunno," he said, sipping his Scotch. He nodded at Sergio on stage. "Those scars don't look like much fun to me."

A crack of the whip demanded silence. The audience held its breath. The dominatrix began to work. Quick nips elicited gasps from Sergio. Red welts formed-low down on his love handles, high up on his shoulders. Her aim was flawless: she never hit the same place twice. She paused, posed for the audience: demure.

Sergio twitched. "What are you doing? Why are you stopping?"

Beneath the mask, a smile flickered on her lips. She cast her eyes at the floor.

Sergio heaved at the restraints, arched his back. "Do it!" he screamed at the ceiling. "Don't stop! Please!"

The next blow hit him square in the middle of his back, all her strength aiming the whip at his spine. The skin broke. Sergio groaned.

I fidgeted in my seat. The dominatrix slashed at his back with her whip, taking ten-second breaks between each blow. Sergio's noises of satisfaction became whimpers. Blood smeared, splattered with each stroke, trickled along the scarred waterways of his back into the seat of his pants. The remnants of his shirt turned scarlet.

"Oh G.o.d," he panted, his head on his chest, "give it to me. All of it. All that I deserve."

I swallowed my gla.s.s of Scotch. It tasted bad. I had never felt less aroused. Maybe Pitt was right. Was this what I was like? But I didn't enjoy the pain. Pain hurt. I'm not some kind of pervert. Pain was what I deserved.

All that I deserve.

But that's what he'd just said. It wasn't the same. It couldn't be. I fingered the two bits of paper in my pocket. I carried them with me everywhere. A picture and a postcard. I took out the postcard, bent it to catch the light. The front showed a photo of Lake t.i.ticaca. I flipped it over to the handwritten scrawl on the back, even though I had long since memorized it. Pitt s.n.a.t.c.hed the card from my hands.

"Hey!" I shouted, and reached for it.

He held it overhead. "Who's this from?"

"From Kate. Give that back!"

"Who's Kate?" His eyes scanned the note.

"My wife."

"Your what?"

I grabbed for the postcard again, but he held it out of reach. "My almost-wife. Or never-wife, as she called herself. We were engaged."

"And what's this-'End the guilt'? What is that all about, man?"

I slugged him as hard as I could. He bent over and I retrieved the note.

He chuckled through his pain. "How can you even think about getting married, bro?" He flung an arm at the stage. "There's so many chicas here in need of good gringo loving. How can you pick just one?"

A security guard with a hand cannon on his hip appeared at the table. "Gentlemen," he said. "Is everything alright?"

"Fine." I put on my innocent gringo grin. The guard reluctantly strolled away. I said to Pitt, "You're an a.s.shole, you know that?"

His laughter faded quickly. "Of course I'm an a.s.shole. How many times I got to tell you?"

"Yeah, well. You don't have to be that way with me." I took out my lighter and flicked it on and off. On and off. On and off.

"My shrink says I'm numb to the world. A real insensitive blockhead."

I nodded. "It's alright, man. I've been hanging on to this G.o.dd.a.m.n thing for too long anyway. Maybe I can learn a thing or two from an insensitive blockhead like you." Lighten the ten-ton load on my shoulders by half an ounce. I held the lighter to a corner of the postcard. It caught fire.

"What are you doing?" He s.n.a.t.c.hed it from me and smushed it out in the wet circles that coated our table. "Why don't you go to her? It sounds like she's found a better way to cope than you."

I shook my head. "She's a reminder of my crime. I could never find peace with her." I stood. "Come on."

Sergio moaned his pleasure. While the dominatrix continued to whip him, a wh.o.r.e knelt before him and loosened the zipper constraining the bulge in his pants.

Pitt followed me to the exit. He still held the postcard in his hand. "Sure you don't want this?"

"You keep it," I said. "Burn it. Wipe your a.s.s with it. Just so I never see it again." I burst out into the foul air, the streets swarming with human vermin. "Now let's get a move on. The night is young, and so are we, and we have our bodies to destroy."

Sergio said, "We'll finish after lunch."

He unbridged his fingertips, bent a smile from his crowbar of a frown. He flicked his ponytail off his shoulder and stood, b.u.t.toning his suit jacket. He led the way out of the conference room. I followed, Shanti right behind me, three ugly ducklings in a row.

No sooner had he closed the gla.s.s door to his office than he grabbed a hairbrush and faced me, brandishing it like a rapier. "What would Ambo say?"

Ambo was Pitt's father, the American amba.s.sador to Peru. One drunk luncheon by the beach Pitt had dubbed him "Ambo," and despite the frequent paternal threats of physical violence, the nickname stuck.

I shrugged. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Shanti's broad shoulders rolled and flexed, as though preparing for round two. I said, "Ambo doesn't know."

"Yes, well. You say that now. He has ways of finding out."

The room was simple. Spartan. No. Not even. It was actively uncomfortable. There were no chairs for guests. Papers lay scattered across a beat-up metal desk, the kind I had in my own cla.s.sroom. A broken fold-out chair served as Sergio's throne. In the corner stood a cheap plywood cabinet. A heavy lock dangled from its latches.

Sergio ripped a black hair tie from his ponytail and flicked his hair over his head, a sixteen-year-old girl in the throes of pre-prom grooming.

I said, "You must have some idea where he is."

"I a.s.sure you, it is a mystery to us both." He attacked his hair, sc.r.a.ped the brush from neck to forehead.

I sat on the edge of his desk. "But you have an idea."

Sergio tossed his hair back. It surrounded his head in a cloud of gray. He pointed the brush at me. "Pitt resigned effective immediately."

"What do you mean, 'resigned'?" I asked. "Why would he resign? This place was perfect cover."

"Never showed for work. That's all I know."