Ruy stared hatefully at Mingolla.
‘You been a bad boy, Ruy,’ Mingolla said, and grinned.
‘I don’t want you talking to either of them without my permission,’ said Marina. ‘Is that clear?’
‘That’s hard to avoid,’ said Ruy. ‘I live in the same building, and I’m bound to run into them.’
‘Move,’ she said. ‘Move tonight. You can move in here, Ruy. You used to tell me how much you liked being near me. Now you have your wish.’
Ruy looked stricken. ‘I’m going to talk to Carlito about this. Right now. He’s not going to be happy.’
Marina turned to Mingolla. ‘Would you mind leaving us, David. Ruy apparently needs proof of our seriousness.’
‘What you gonna do to him?’
‘Give him a taste of what he’s risking.’
‘No!’ Ruy shouted it, wrestled with the doorknob, and was thrown back by two of the men.
Please, David.’ Marina gestured toward the door, and Mingolla crossed to it, taking pains to avoid Ruy’s eyes. ‘Oh, David!’ Marina called as he went out into the hall.
‘Yes?’
Her smile was the gracious smile of a hostess acknowledging the departure of a favored guest. ‘Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gilbey’s friendship with Jack Lescaux gave Mingolla hope that he might restore Gilbey completely: friendship was such a human thing and so untypical of the armies. He was strong enough to effect this; he could feel strength like a heavy stone inside his head, wanting to explode, to exert itself upon some target. But he must not have had sufficient knowledge. Even had he been stronger and more knowledgeable, he doubted he would have been able to do anything for Jack. Most of the time Jack was barely capable of movement, and on the one occasion that Mingolla succeeded in getting him to talk at length, an afternoon they spent on the steps of the palace, it made him very unhappy. Mingolla asked how he had become involved with the families, and he replied, ‘It was somethin’ in the music they wanted… somethin’ they made me do.’ Mingolla assumed Jack had been forced to inject subliminals into his recordings, perhaps ones that would appeal to psychics; but the particulars didn’t interest him. If he were to try and root out every Sotomayor game, he would have time for little else.
Jack hummed, broke off, then rocked back and forth, smacking a hand against his thigh as if trying to recapture a rhythm. ‘Wish I had a billion dollars,’ he sang. ‘I’d buy myself…’ He made a fist, pressed it to his head. ‘I got a little of it,’ he said. ‘Little bit.’
‘Let’s hear ’er. Jack,’ said Gilbey.
Jack, a stressed look on his face, sang out again.
He faltered, appearing worried. ‘There’s more. I… I can’t get it.’
‘Take your time, man,’ said Mingolla.
After a minute, Jack sang some more.
Again he faltered, and Mingolla boosted his good feeling, started him singing a third time, but singing a different song, softer, almost chanted.
‘There’s more,’ he said. ‘Lots more.’
‘Y’should write it down, man,’ said Gilbey, pretending to write with the point of his machete. ‘Get some paper, and write it down.’
‘Yeah, okay,’ said Jack, scratching his head, and then burst into tears.
Mingolla put far more effort into Gilbey. Once, thinking a sexual experience might enhance his work, he dug up a woman for him, primed her with horniness, and staked her out in one of the empty buildings, a room with depressions in carpets of gray dust that testified to the long-ago presence of chairs and tables. The woman was pudgy, worn-looking, and Gilbey said, She’s a fuckin’ beast, man. I dunno ’bout this.’
The woman smiled and jerked her hips in invitation.
‘Well,’ said Gilbey. ‘I guess she got okay tits.’
Mingolla left them alone, and when he returned he found them both asleep, Gilbey’s hand resting in proprietary fashion on her hip. He wasn’t sure anything had happened, but afterward Gilbey did seem more his old self.
That same evening they walked out behind the palace, a spot from which they could see the barricade: a long flimsy wall of planks nailed into a gapped barrier ten feet high, with two guardhouses of equally crude construction behind it. Like kid’s clubhouses. A dirt road led across a grassy meadow from the barricade toward green hills in the distance, and Mingolla imagined stealing a jeep, ramming through the wall, and heading up into those hills. It was a pleasant fantasy, but he knew Debora would never go along with it. And anyway, it was likely they’d be killed in the process.
Jack curled up in the dust, and Mingolla and Gilbey sat on the rear steps of the palace. Mingolla could make out riflemen pacing behind the barricade. Twilight had thickened to dusk, and a scatter of stars picked out the slate-colored sky. The windows of the buildings set away from the palace showed black and unreflective, rectangles of obsidian set into palely glowing stone; the breeze drifted scraps of cellophane along the asphalt, and a scrawny cat with scabs dotting its marmalade coat came prowling past and stopped to regard them with cold curiosity.
Gilbey had stumbled across a splintered baseball bat, one that had probably been used as a weapon, and he was turning it in his hands. ‘Be neat, y’know,’ he said.
‘What?’ Mingolla was watching the shadowy figures of the riflemen.
Gilbey was silent for such a long time that Mingolla wondered if he had lost his train of thought. Get up a game,’ he said at last. ‘Be neat to get up a game. Think we could.’
‘A baseball game?’
‘Yeah, we could get some guys.’ He stared at the bat, gave it a tentative swing.
The idea of Gilbey with his dulled reflexes playing baseball depressed Mingolla. He pictured the ratty blond hair sheared away, the grime washed from the cheeks, the expression firmed into one of sour indulgence. But it didn’t work. The old Gilbey was dead, and the new Gilbey was moribund.