David Levien - City of the Sun

“I had to come here, man,” Paul said, apology in his voice.

“I know,” Behr responded.

“It was a waste of time. Of everything.”

“No,” Behr said without much behind it.

“I ’ m not even his father anymore.”

“It doesn ’ t end just because your son is gone.” Behr pushed his plate away.

“We can leave — ”

“We ’ ll leave when we ’ re done.”

It was then that they saw Victor across the restaurant coming in the door. Paul threw some bills on the table and they got up. He followed Behr ’ s lead, which was to walk past Victor right out the door. The persistent young man followed them, even as they walked out of the pool of light produced by the restaurant and on into the darkness of the rest of the street.

“Ay, wait.”

“This kid doesn ’ t quit,” Behr said to Paul, stopping and allowing Victor to reach them.

“I take you someplace else?” Victor said hopefully.

“We ’ re done with you,” Behr said.

“Come on, man.”

“All right,” Behr said, turning and stepping closer to the slight younger man. “Take us to the place where the rich gringos go. The place where the real young ones are. Chicos.”

It registered with Victor. He studied them. “You ’ re not jotos.”

Behr grabbed him by the shirt and jacket and jerked him forward off balance. Paul glanced up and down the street, which was clear.

“No, but we ’ re looking for what happened to someone important. Someone who may have ended up there. So where would you take us if we had a taste for young boys?”

“You are cops — ”

“No.”

“Fuck off.”

“I like you, Victor. You ’ ve been decent to us. You ’ re just a guy trying to get ahead. Right?”

“ Sн, sн.”

“But I will start breaking things on you if you don ’ t help us.”

“No, man. Fuck off.”

Behr drew back in a blaze of motion and delivered a short, chopping punch to Victor ’ s liver. The young man gasped and keeled, and Behr held him up.

“More is coming,” Behr warned, and Victor ’ s head set to nodding. After a moment he regained the ability to speak.

“My cousin is a pollero.”

“What ’ s that? A chicken cowboy?” Behr wondered, as his Spanish was rudimentary.

“ Coyote? Maybe you know that?”

“Border crosser.” Behr nodded with understanding.

“ Sн. One thousand U.S.” Victor sucked at the air. “He help with other things. ї Entiendes? ”

“Where is he?”

“He gone now. He back tomorrow night. Maybe the next.”

“Fuck that,” Behr said.

“For true. You meet him then.”

Behr let Victor loose and then stepped back and ran his hands through his hair. Victor probed around his midsection with his hands.

Paul moved over to him, handed him two hundred-dollar bills, and patted him on the shoulder. “Bring him to us when he ’ s back, then. If he takes us where we want to go, you get the rest of the thousand,” he said.

“And don ’ t fuck around with us,” Behr added.

“I no fuck,” Victor assured them and moved off into the night.

“Damnit,” Behr breathed when it was just the two of them.

“Let ’ s get a drink,” Paul said.

“Eh — ” Behr began, as much defeat in his voice as Paul had ever heard. From some men the tone of voice wouldn ’ t have meant much, but from Behr it was unacceptable.

“I need one,” Paul said.

Finding a place to drink wasn ’ t difficult. They didn ’ t know Ciudad del Sol well, but all cities were the same basic mixture of humanity. They all had aspects of beauty and ugliness. All had at least one church and one jail. Paul and Behr had been there long enough to start to understand the geometry, and they found a bar on Calle Maria del Monte that served the local tequila out of clay gourds. It was a clear, fresh-tasting distillation that had salt and lime undertones, as well as some flavor of the clay in which it came. The first drink was had in silence. Paul quickly re-poured.

“I tell you, I don ’ t like doing that shit.”

“I know, Frank.”

“You get to the point where you ’ re tired of being fucked around.”

“I can ’ t tell if you ’ re talking about the case and this trip, or life in general,” Paul wondered.

“I ’ m not sure, either.” They both laughed.

“I don ’ t know that the kid has information and was holding back,” Paul said over the rim of his glass.

“He knows something. Everybody does. And when they hold back it ’ s not always conscious.”

Paul realized that he was getting a lesson learned of years. They drank more. Behr had a distant expression in his eyes.

There was a row of men at the bar who wore paper-thin T-shirts streaked with ground-in dirt. Long hair shot out from beneath ball caps and straw hats. Their fingernails were ringed with black earth. They drank quickly and talked among themselves, and began drifting out before long.

Behr ordered another gourd of tequila. Paul started to go hazy, between the liquor and the fatigue, a more tolerable distance from the hard edges of reality. He let out a deep breath. It felt like it went on forever, like he ’ d been holding it in for a year. He reached for his wallet, but not to pay. He pulled out the photo of Jamie that he carried now. It was one of the last taken before he went missing. It was shot in their backyard. Jamie wore a red polo shirt and a half-smile. Paul felt his eyes burn into his son ’ s eyes in the photo. He wondered at the face, at what it would have become. After a while it was enough; he put away the photo and looked across at Behr.

Behr finished his glass and set it on the table. He reached for his own wallet. He flipped through several credit cards and business cards to where he kept it, his photo of Tim. He didn ’ t keep it on top. He couldn ’ t handle that kind of thorn on a daily basis. He looked down at his son, handsome in his blue sweater over a pale blue button-down shirt, standing in front of a felt background cloth, his hand posed unnaturally by the school photographer on a fence-rail prop. Behr looked at the photo for a long moment, then passed it to Paul, whose head bent over it reverentially.

“Tim, right,” Paul said.

Behr nodded. “His first-grade school portrait,” he began. “I still remember the day, even though he ’ s been gone longer than he was alive.” Behr poured himself another drink, his hand steady. “Linda had taken extra care in combing his hair and getting him ready. The class pictures were at nine thirty in the morning, and that was a good thing. By lunch Tim ’ s shirt would have been untucked, rumpled, the sweater in a ball at the bottom of his cubby, his hair a mess. By the time he came home he ’ d be grass-stained at best, if a piece of clothing wasn ’ t ripped outright. Linda told him every day to keep himself nice. It didn ’ t work. The day of the picture she ’ d told him at least twice and maybe because of that we ended up with that good a picture.”

Paul smiled and handed it back. Behr put it down on the table between them, unwilling as yet to return his son to his wallet crypt.

“You never told me how he died,” Paul said.

Behr straightened and spoke in a measured way. “I ’ d been on night watch. I was sleeping during the day. At the end of shift we ’ d go to Loader ’ s. A cop bar. They ’ d be opening for the day and we ’ d have a few pops. I ’ d been pulling overtime and it added to the exhaustion.” He knew he sounded like he was on the witness stand or giving a deposition; the dry facts were what he drew on to get through it the few times he ’ d told it aloud.

“It was funny, because I didn ’ t feel so tired that day when I got home, so I sat down on the couch and started watching sports highlights,” he continued. “I fell asleep there. The gunshot woke me up, and by the time I made it into the bedroom, blood was everywhere.” Now he had to pause, because the memory was twisting in him like a rusty knife. Bitterness overtook his measured testimonial.