Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

Traffic was backing up behind the stalled motorcade. One of Yayo's men held up his submachine gun; the honking stopped. In respects, Lima is similar to Los Angeles.

Yayo had his frantic look. He whispered to Flores, "Is he wearing his vest?" Flores rolled his eyes-how should I know? "Please, patron ," begged Yayo, "get back in the car. Please."

"What's your name, beauty?" He stroked her matted hair. "Where do you live?" There was no answer to that.

"Flores," he said, holding out his hand. Flores took out a roll and peeled off bills. He handed them to El Niño. El Niño took the whole billfold and put it in the gamine's sticky hand and closed his own over hers. The gamine grinned at him. She reached into her rags and produced a basuco cigarette and held it out to him. They made them from pasta sucia and tobacco: the high came mostly from the kerosene and hydrochloric acid and other chemicals, not from the coca. He stared at the crudely rolled cigarette in the sticky palm. He took it from her and said, "Thank you, beauty." The girl smiled.

He stood and got back in the car and drove the rest of the way in silence. Flores didn't say anything until they reached the edge of the crowd in Las Barriadas.

Flores' people had built a small stage in front of the building hung with the banner that said CLINICA LIBRE, and had set up food and drink stands, had hired musicians, put up lights and posters and loudspeakers. The atmosphere was that of a political rally, an election without candidates. His people were scattered throughout the crowd of five hundred to get the chant going, organizing their roars into iambs, "Ni-no! Ni-no!" Soon they were all converging on the stalled motorcade. Then the hot TV lights were on, bathing everything in that lurid glare. Dr. Nunez was on the stage with a microphone, shouting, "Let him through! Please, let him through! He's here! He's come! But we have to let him through!"

Yayo put himself at the head of the phalanx, but even Yayo could not penetrate this. They all wanted to touch him, to tear off a piece of clothing for a talisman. Their arms insinuated between Yayo's men, hands plucking at him. His blood was rushing, it was good, but thank God for Yayo's men, they'd tear you to pieces with their love otherwise. It made him think of when Papa had taken him to the plaza when he was very young to see the god Ordonez kill bulls. A total disaster. Ordonez put the sword into the bull, the bull hunched his great shoulder muscles and the sword flew out like a missile, followed by a tremendous gush of blood. He began to cry for the bull as it writhed on the ground while Ordonez strutted in his suit of lights. Papa, mortified, took him home and made him put on his sister's clothing, made him go to school in a dress for a week; regarded with satisfaction the bruises he returned with every day.

They had to lift him onto the stage over the heads of the crowd. He held up his arms to silence them, but they kept chanting. He shook hands with Dr. Nunez. Dr. Nunez made an Ecce homo gesture. Niño took the microphone from him.

"This is your clinic now," he said. "And no one will take it from you!"

Something went flying through the air and landed on the stage by his feet. A rosary. He picked it up and, smiling, shook his head. "Listen to me. Science is the answer to our problems. Not"-he waved the rosary-"this. This was brought by the Spaniards." He tossed it back into the crowd. " This "-he pointed to the whitewashed building behind him-"was brought by me!" The crowd roared.

"He's good," Dr. Nunez said to Flores.

"Yes."

"What does he want? I mean, he's not going to run for office again, is he?"

Flores made a face. "Pah-he's finished with that shit."

"So, why?"

"He wants to help people."

"Sure, but why?"

"He wants to make the government look like assholes."

"Ah," said Dr. Nunez, satisfied. He stepped forward and shouted into his microphone, "¡Viva El Niño!"

"Viva El Niño!" the crowd shouted back.

Rosaries flew through the air.

The reporters were negotiating their way through the crowd in front of the stage. He saw a blonde followed closely by TV lights. Antoniela Catamarca, Channel 7. Good-looking. Christ, a guy was putting his hand up her skirt for a grope. She hit him. The man just grinned. Kids were slicing at her cameraman's belt with razors.

"Yayo." He pointed.

Yayo and his people got her up onto the stage. She was shaken. "That filthy, disgusting cholo "-she pointed at the man-"he, he-"

"Don't blame him too much. Beautiful women like you never come to Las Barriadas. That was probably the happiest he will ever be in his life."

"Well, I don't know about that." But she was already adjusting herself in a compact mirror. She held his microphone to his lips; such an obviously phallic act, he thought. How do they manage it?

"This is the sixth so-called free clinic you've established in Lima," she began.

"Wait," said her cameraman. "I'm not getting power. Shit, those little fuckers stole my batteries."

The other reporters were on him now. He wondered which was from ¡Mira! He heard a man's voice say, "Sendero"; he turned away toward another reporter. The man said more loudly, "It's alleged that you're connected with Sendero Luminoso."

He turned toward the man. Robles, from El Comercio . He said into his own microphone, "Señor Robles here, from the great newspaper El Comercio, which only comes to Las Barriadas to hunt Communists, wants to know if I am connected to the Shining Path? I told him my connection is to you. What do you say?"

"Kill him!"

He turned back to Robles, who had gone pale. He smiled. "There's your answer. Next question?"

La Republica wanted to know why he wouldn't stand for the municipal elections in November. "I want to help Peru, not make things worse." The reporters laughed.

"What about the foreign debt?"

"It is Peru that is owed, not the other way around. Let the imperialists return all the gold and silver they took from us. Then let us look at the balance sheet."

"Brigitte Nielsen, the former wife of Rambo, is in Peru making a film. What is your opinion of her?"

"What?" ¡Mira! "I-have no opinion on this." Yayo, get this idiot away from me.

"Are you related to Julio Iglesias?"

"No!"

"But you're an Iglesias."

"I have not used that name for years," he said testily. He turned to Dr. Nunez. "Come on, let's see the clinic."

"Of course, Niño."

As they went in, reporters following, Flores nudged the doctor and whispered, "Remember, only the really sick ones."

"They're all 'really sick,' Flores." There was an old man gasping with asthma, a boy with a crushed leg needing amputation, several horrible worm cases, dehydrated infants. In one ward they came to a shrieking basuco smoker tied hands and feet to the bed because he had scratched the skin on his legs down to the bone. Flores whispered to Nunez, "Christ, Nunez!"

A man coughing up blood from consumptive lungs, a rabies case, drooling, blank-staring stroke victims, a failing kidney, cancers of the bone and throat, AIDS. The reporters had grown quiet. They came to a woman whose husband, Dr. Nunez explained, had gotten drunk on pisco and thrown a pot of boiling chicken grease on her.

Nunez whispered to El Niño, "Frankly, patron , it would be better if she died."

El Niño sat in a chair beside her bed and took her hand. She squeezed it. He said into her ear, "I am going to take care of you." She made a croaking noise. He stood and told Nunez that he would make an arrangement to fly her in his own plane to Texas, where there was a famous burn unit.

"Bravo, El Niño!" Flores clapped.