Will Staeger - Public Enemy

After an hour on an increasingly winding, thinly paved, oft-cracked highway, Borrego dug into his cooler and began distributing triple-decker club sandwiches. He explained that the facility they were visiting lay just outside a seaside village called Dangriga, known for its enormous lobster haul.

“Be good to stick around for dinner,” he said, wolfing the sandwich as he spoke. “Nothing like a four-pound Belize lobster.”

Cooper didn’t argue.

A couple miles past the Dangriga town line, Madrid hauled ass onto an un-paved side road that climbed into the hills. Cooper was about to toss his half-digested turkey club on the velociraptor’s lap when a towering, razor-wire-tipped cyclone fence appeared on the right-hand side of the road-along with some buildings, mounds of squashed cars, and a series of other, less identifiable structures, all lurking behind the coiled edge of protective fence.

Not your usual used-car lot, Cooper thought, but maybe a hell of a place to blank-slate some late-model American sedans for redistribution around the globe.

Madrid found the entrance, a gated break in the fence, and pulled the Defender alongside a pole-mounted mesh speaker with a white button on its face. Madrid punched the button with his left hand; Cooper noted the proximity of the velociraptor’s right hand to the holster on his hip.

“Yeah,” came the static-ridden sound of a man’s voice from the speaker.

“We’re here to visit some friends,” the velociraptor said in crisp English.

After a brief silence, the voice said, “Who that?”

Madrid rattled off four names Cooper hadn’t heard before.

A longer silence ensued. When Madrid appeared ready to speak up again, the voice from the box said, “Only one of them here today.”

“Well,” Madrid said, “we’d like to see him.”

“He agree you friends, I ask him?” came the voice.

“Sure,” the velociraptor said. “Just tell him it’s the Polar Bear.”

Another pause. “The Polar Bear.”

“That’s it,” Madrid said.

Cooper had long since caught the security camera peering down at them from the top of the gate. He expected the voice wouldn’t need to ask whether they were cops, since the Land Rover couldn’t really be mistaken for a Belize City PD cruiser.

A click and whine sounded out as the gate swung inward, opening with a jerky but consistent pace, as though it ran on rusty chains. Madrid brought them inside as though he knew where to go, though Cooper suspected he didn’t. A thick-jowled man with deeply brown skin, wearing a pitted-out T-shirt and grubby jeans, emerged from a kind of lean-to not far from the gate. Cooper found it interesting that the man did nothing but stand and observe the Defender’s progress.

Madrid parked in an open patch of dirt beside the junkyard’s main building, a huge prefab corrugated-aluminum structure Cooper figured a strong wind would knock down. He also figured the building could easily be relocated in half a day if you knew how to take it down and had a flatbed truck handy to do it with. A partially shredded blue tarp dangled like a curtain over its main opening, so you couldn’t see inside but could push your way in with a brush of the hand. Madrid led the way in, having a look around before holding the tarp aside to allow Borrego to pass.

Cooper ducked in behind the Polar Bear and found his senses immediately assaulted by the sights, smells, and sounds of an auto-body shop. Maybe fifteen men of varying ages worked on different parts of different cars in different stages of repair, the activity taking place in clumps, almost like a virtual cubicle environment-workstations divided by function but not walls. And while the work continued without pause, every man in the place, in his own way, took careful stock of their arrival. Cooper took stock in return-black, white, and brown faces alike, some of them adorned with welding helmets, some in baseball caps, others in overalls, or plastic ponchos splattered with different colors of paint-all of them wore the hang-dog slouch, that edgy angle of repose common to guys on probation or parole.

Giving the impression of lazy indifference but ready to bolt on a dime.

One of the laborers stood off to the side, welding torch idle in his hand, helmet tilted back. To Cooper the guy looked Guatemalan, but he wasn’t sure whether his idea of Guatemalan was accurate.

Borrego waved to the man with a kind of cocksure effusiveness that immediately dispelled the air of skeptic tension from the army of ex-cons. By the time he shook hands with the Guatemalan, everybody seemed comfortable in his own skin again, and the pace and noise had kicked up a notch. Cooper and Madrid followed Borrego over but held back, close enough to listen but not to participate.

As Borrego shook with him, the Guatemalan covered his face with his off hand and sneezed. He wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, which caused Cooper to notice the red chafing around his nostrils.

“Mierda,” the Guatemalan said. The conversation, which Cooper understood perfectly well, continued in Spanish. “Sorry-been sick as a dog.”

“Yeah? We’ll get you some vitamins, you want,” Borrego said. “I’ve got a guy in the city’ll take care of you, vitamin pouches that’ll turn you around in a day.”

“No gracias,” the Guatemalan said. He held up his hand. “I’m getting better. Can’t say the same for the others.”

“No?” Cooper appreciated the way Borrego held a conversation, speaking as though he got what the man was saying when he clearly had no idea what the guy was talking about.

The Guatemalan lowered his voice and Cooper pretty much had to read his lips to understand his next words.

“It’s the curse,” he said. “The goddamn curse.”

Borrego laughed. “Come on,” he said.

The Guatemalan wasn’t quite shaking, but he definitely had the look of a cornered mouse. Seemed to Cooper Borrego wasn’t the cat he was scared of-Borrego was everybody’s buddy, including the Guatemalan’s.

“That where your pals are-out sick?” Borrego said.

“Sick?” The Guatemalan chirped out a nervous laugh. “Shit, Oso-they’re dead.”

Cooper felt a gut-twinge as his concentration locked in. He assumed Borrego was experiencing a similar pinch.

“How?”

“I’m telling you, Oso, it’s the curse. You know-the kind they tell you about in museums? Strange shit taking out anybody fool enough to raid an ancient king’s tomb. That’s what we got, getting those artifacts we sold to you. Fuck! I’ve been in bed for a week. And I’m the lucky one.”

Cooper heard Borrego say, “So they were sick, like you.”

“They were sick all right. And they caught it from that fucking town. The caves. That isn’t how they died, though. Not all three.”

“No?”

“It was bad luck. Kind of bad luck you get from a tomb-robber’s curse. Radame was shot, got killed by a stray bullet in Dangriga. Eduardo too. They were together. Caught in the middle of some gang shit-”

“I get it,” Borrego said, and turned his body slightly to look over at Cooper. Cooper raised his eyebrows and shook his head half a shake.

“All right,” the Guatemalan said, “but you wanna know how Chávez bit it? Got hit by a fucking bus, that’s how. Fucking school bus, and there weren’t even any kids in the thing. Dumb luck. Bad luck. The fucking curse. I’m lucky I survived so far.”

“Could be just that,” Borrego said. “Dumb luck.”

“Could be, but lemme tell you-I don’t care. I’m out. Retired.” He motioned with his left hand to the welding torch in his right. “You see this? This is what I do, and this is what I’m going to keep on doing. This or something like it. Nothing like the other shit. Not anymore.”