Nightlife Read online

  The hekura-teri had been born of jungle. And he could sense its path across the face of the sky.

  Kerebawa would daily perform, alone, the same rituals that went on back home in Mabori-teri. He had no one to blow the ebene through a tube for him, so he sniffed it from his fingertips until he had enough to open his eyes to even deeper mysteries. The mysteries of the noreshi, his soul. And the spirit animal to which his soul was aligned. Noreshi referred to either as well as both, for the two were inseparable. The fate of one was the fate of the other.

  And during his ebene trances, he would sing and chant and dance, then look to the sky to see a large hawk, his spirit animal, circling aloft in the distance, in the direction of the next day’s travel. The hawk was far wiser than he, with keener senses. No doubt the bird could see the trail left by the passage of the hekura-teri. And guide him.

  It reminded Kerebawa of one of his favorite Bible stories Angus had taught him. A man called Moses, leading his people out of slavery into a new land. Following signs in the sky. Cloud by day, fire by night.

  He followed the hawk for five days, until it hovered in circles over a sprawling home of white stucco and red-tiled roof. Far down the mountainside. In the distance, Medellín-teri lay like a scattering of enormous jewels. But they were poison. The stink of fear was like morning mist that winds could never blow away and sun could never burn off.

  So long a journey, now ended. While the hard part was just beginning.

  He eased his way down the mountain, at one with the jungle. Ferns, vines, creepers, palms, underbrush. The chattering of monkeys and the calls of birds. Keeping soft, silent. Stripped to the skin as his forefathers would have been, before the white men taught them shame. Wearing only his waistcord.

  Kerebawa came within scant feet of the edge of the jungle and the start of a clearing. He shook his head. All these hardlooking shabonos looked alike. He dug through his cloth roll and found a picture of the home of Hernando Vasquez. Compared the picture with real thing. At least they seemed to match.

  Ebene time. For once he dispensed with the noisier aspects of the ritual. When he looked skyward, he saw the departing hawk, and that cinched it for him. Here the traders would learn the true wrath of the Fierce People.

  Kerebawa stole about to various vantage points. He scaled trees, pulling with callused hands and pushing with callused feet, until he had better views of the area. Wise warriors always know the lay of the land before a raid.

  And this place did not look good.

  The house, with perhaps a hundred yards between it and the jungle at the clearing’s broadest point, was guarded by six men. Four in back, two in front. With wasp-guns.

  They were the sicarios, assassins employed by Vasquez and men like him. As guards, as hit-men. Like the Yanomamö, they too learned savagery at a young age. Most were anywhere from early teens to around twenty years old. The young were more dangerous, always thought they were immortal. And gave less thought to pulling a trigger.

  Kerebawa knew none of this, only that they were many to his one. Arrows would be of limited value against this enemy. He’d have to resort to a variation of the nomohoni, massacre by treachery.

  And for that, a wise warrior is patient. To plan carefully.

  For two days he watched their routines. Noting by the position of the sun when they came and went. He moved like a wraith through the surrounding jungle to watch the house from back, front, both sides. A few times he caught sight of an older man who moved among his inferiors with the authority of a headman. Kerebawa consulted his pictures. Hernando Vasquez. The back of the photo was stamped with the phrase, DEA SURVEILLANCE PHOTO.

  The first night, long after most of the compound had retired for the day, he ventured down onto their grounds. Painted black with his pigments, hugging the shadows of the house and trees and a couple of smaller outbuildings. One he even dared to enter, and he found a garrison of sorts for the soldiers. He passed a pair of men sleeping on cots. So easy to slit their throats in their sleep — but no, now wasn’t the time. Predominant in this block building was a kitchen. Mealtime had looked to be their primary moment of vulnerability, when a fat cook would bring a bowl of food to each sicario on duty.

  When Kerebawa returned to his hidden stash of supplies back up the mountainside, he was satisfied. And slept. Tried to, at least. He dared not build a fire this close, and it left him cold inside and out. He thought of the fire burning low back in his own shabono so far away, of sharing its warmth with his wife and son. This was a trying time back home. Mating with Kashimi was taboo now, as their son was but a year old and she still nursed him. It left him plenty beshi. Angus had taught him a funny English word for that one — horny, Padre had called it. It was enough to make a man want to load up on ebene and become a shaman.

  Kerebawa watched the routines of the guards all the next day. They were lazy men, he could tell, used to doing little or nothing. By late afternoon, when the men of Mabori-teri would have been sniffing ebene and chanting to their demons, Kerebawa was engaged in an activity of a far more lethal nature. Luckily, he’d come prepared.

  The Yanomamö and other equatorial Indians bake a bread called cassava, the flour derived from two varieties of the manioc root. Americans know the root as tapioca. And the Indians know that the bitter manioc root is violently poisonous. Kerebawa had brought several roots along, just in case. A wise warrior plans ahead.

  He peeled the roots, soaked and squeezed them in water to leach out the toxins. Normally the water was then boiled; the heat gradually destroyed the poisons while the liquid thickened into a tasty syrup. But Kerebawa merely stored the water, perhaps a half-quart, in a gourd container.

  There was more than one way to stage a massacre.

  Kerebawa painted himself black again, then descended the mountain. First with the water, ever so carefully, to stow it near the kitchen. He notched it in some tree roots so it wouldn’t topple over. He returned for his weapons, then positioned himself in foliage, concealed and still able to peer through the outbuilding’s windows, as the cook prepared the evening meal.

  An hour later, while the sun waned, the cook left the building long enough to take two bowls to the guards out front.

  Kerebawa padded silently out of the forest, across open ground, then into the kitchen. Gourd in one hand, machete in the other. He peeked inside first, found it empty. Just cabinets, boxes of supplies, a stove built up from red bricks. Countertops and a refrigerator. How could human beings eat food processed by these contraptions? It seemed the food would lose all flavor and value.

  On a countertop stood a large pot; beside it, several bowls and spoons. He dipped a finger into the pot. Cold, somewhat greasy. He licked his finger clean, one eye on the door. A tart taste — gazpacho soup. Good. It would help mask the bitter water. He dumped the water from gourd to pot, then clumsily rattled a wooden ladle around to mix it. He returned to the lip of the forest to wait. And watch, as the cook waddled back and forth to distribute the bowls to the rear guards.

  Shortly after returning from the final trip, the cook remained in the building. Kerebawa heard running water, the clang of pots and pans. Wait a bit more, time to make himself hot and meat-hungry, ready for war. And time for the poison to take effect.

  Kerebawa had mixed it strong, and it would take from fifteen to thirty minutes for the onset of symptoms, the poison entering the bloodstream from the stomach. Once that happened, the men had but three to five minutes. Symptoms progressed quickly. Tingling in the extremities, increasing tunnel vision, sweating, then unconsciousness. And death.

  After the guards had been eating awhile, Kerebawa returned to the kitchen. An ebony shadow, machete in hand, he was through the doorway in an eyeblink. The fat cook, glancing up from his sink full of dirty cookware, barely managed to squeak out a cry before Kerebawa split his wide forehead with the machete. Kerebawa caught his heavy body before it fell, extracted the blade by wiggling it back and forth. Stowed the body behind several crates as the
head leaked onto the floor.

  Back to the forest’s edge, crouching. He retrieved his bow and arrows. Earlier, he’d fixed war tips onto the arrow shafts, sharpened bamboo points with barbs made of monkey bone, and coated with curare.

  When the first of the disoriented guards out back fell, Kerebawa sprinted low and parallel with the jungle’s edge to the front of the house. No poison to do his work up here, unfortunately. The far guard was near a small barricade beside the drive leading up to the house. Kerebawa aimed and drew his bow, let the arrow fly. It slammed into the guard’s back, barbed tip breaking off just under his shoulder. He went down with a grunt, and Kerebawa was already loading and aiming the second. Before the other guard, nearer the house, could make sense of his fallen comrade, the next arrow had sunk into the soft flesh just below the breastbone. The curare made short work of them both, rapidly relaxing muscles past the point of any movement. First the limbs, then inward until the lungs and heart themselves were stilled.

  Kerebawa rushed the house, acutely feeling the exhilaration of bloodshed, born into his blood and spirit. He tried a side door, recessed into a covered little walkway, but it was locked. He used the stained machete blade to slice an opening into a nearby screened window and slid through. Dropped to a crouch, looking furtively about.

  The house smelled of too much wasted space and idle hands. The machete he carried aloft, ready to swing. Around his neck hung the bamboo quiver. The bow and arrows themselves were too cumbersome for inside.

  He was in a small bedroom and padded out to the hallway. The walls were the color of bone, and he stood out against them like a man risen from a tar pit. South American artwork of both Spanish and Indian origins hung on the walls. Kerebawa crept deeper into the house, ears pricked for alarm raised by the discovery of the fallen guards.

  Up a flight of four steps, a wider central hallway. Footsteps, shoes on the polished wooden floor.

  “Qué tal?” he heard a man gasp upon looking out a window overlooking the back.

  Kerebawa pressed in close to the wall as the man rushed around the corner. Surely no older than himself, wearing a black shirt with a gun suspended in a leather shoulder rig. His hand was just closing on the gun when he rounded the corner and saw Kerebawa. His eyes widened even as the machete chopped straight across them and the bridge of his nose. Bone splintered into brain, and he was dead on his feet, and Kerebawa eased him to the floor.

  Another guard was on the second floor, his back in view as Kerebawa crept up the stairs. Oblivious to everything going on around him. Kerebawa came up behind him and clamped one hand over his mouth and reached around to drive a bamboo arrow point up into his heart with the other. He waited until the man quit spasming beneath his hand, then laid him to one side.

  What tales he would have to tell when he got back to Mabori-teri! Tales that would be told to children and grandchildren of the village for generations to come. Kerebawa, a true Fierce One, creeping into a strange enemy’s shabono even before nightfall and spilling the blood of many a foe.

  He would be legend. And Angus would be avenged.

  He found no more guards on the rest of his silent trek through the dark of the house. But he found the big man himself at the opposite end. Hernando Vasquez, in his bedroom. The man was older than he had appeared at a distance, hair rapidly graying, his face tight and leathery, with jowls just beginning to turn heavy. Droopy eyes. He was almost grandfatherly. Vasquez wore a silk robe and was with a woman less than half his age. She saw the intruder first, the stalking dark shadow, and gave a startled cry. Dropped a champagne glass to shatter on the floor.

  Kerebawa, knowing the advantage of surprise was gone, charged in with the machete high, cocked, and ready to swing.

  “Carlos! Diego!” Vasquez yelled. He had twitchy eyes. A rat’s eyes. After a beat he called for them again.

  “Muertos,” Kerebawa said. Might as well let him know that he could scream his lungs out and help would not come.

  That a man should live in such splendor and unused space was repugnant. As if Vasquez had to surround himself with trinkets and baubles to distract himself from how empty his life truly was. Such a man was impossible to understand. Truly foreign. Which made Kerebawa wonder: How much more foreign did he seem to Vasquez? How much a part of another world? Probably far more so than Vasquez seemed to him. Which was where the man’s true fear lived.

  Kerebawa backed them across the room until the woman stood beside a canopy bed and Vasquez by a large desk. Kerebawa made a show of stepping aside and looked the woman straight on. Beneath reddish-brown hair, her dusky face was flushed, her lips trembled.

  “Vete a freír monos,” he told her — get lost.

  She took a tentative step forward, then another, eyeing him the whole time. Apparently felt no great loyalty toward her man. As she passed by, Kerebawa lashed out to give her a solid whack across the temple with the machete’s flat side. Certainly not a killing blow, but it would keep her trouble-free for a while. Her lacy gown billowing, she half spun and crumpled to the floor.

  Vasquez looked considerably paler than he had a moment before. A man of bluff and bluster, it seemed. Strip him of his support, and the true coward would be revealed.

  “Dónde esta el hekura-teri?” Kerebawa asked the sweating man.

  Vasquez looked at him, confusion pinching his face. “No comprendo.” His voice quavered.

  Of course. How could he know its true name?

  “Dónde esta el polvo verde” — green powder — “de Venezuela?”

  Vasquez made a relieved face, nodding and smiling broadly. As if he had nothing whatsoever to worry about. Laughing, even. Kerebawa was immediately suspicious.

  “Ah, es no problema! Esta en la gaveta.” He eagerly pointed to a desk drawer. Slowly moved his hand for the knob.

  Impossible. Large as the drawer was, the load of powder taken by the traders couldn’t fit in there. Ignorant man, taking him for a brainless fool.

  Vasquez slid his hand inside the drawer, barely open wide enough to accommodate it. Kerebawa brought the machete around and down in a vicious arc that severed the hand at the wrist with a meaty crunch. Vasquez’s mouth dropped open as he watched the hand jitter atop the butt of an automatic pistol, then fall still. While gouting blood sprayed across papers and books strewn over the desktop. A moment later he shrieked, lifting the stumpy wrist in disbelief. He cradled it to his chest, a huge stain spreading across the silk robe.

  Kerebawa recognized the glazing eyes. The man, even were the bleeding to stop, wasn’t going to be of much use for very long. Shock was setting in.

  “Dónde esta el polvo verde?” he asked again, this time threatening with the machete.

  Vasquez was past tricks. And when he sputtered the powder’s destination, Kerebawa’s heart took a high plunge. He pushed paper and pen across the blood-dewed desktop and had Vasquez write down as much information as he could.

  And when he was done, Kerebawa accomplished something that neither the DEA nor the leftist guerrillas nor the rival cocaine exporters in the nearby city of Cali had managed.

  He effectively removed the head of the Vasquez family.

  And now, a couple of weeks later, here he was in the belly of the flying canoe once again. Ready to resume the trail of the hekura-teri in an even stranger land, a land he’d visited but once.

  Miami-teri.

  He looked at its name, written on a crumpled, dirty sheet of paper, stained with brownish splotches of dried blood. And the name of another man to seek out: Luis Escobar. Plus the word Estrella.

  Miami.

  He was dressed for it; gone was the nudity of the jungle. He wore fresh clothes from Angus’s hut, garments the Padre had given him on their previous trips but that had gone unused since. Pale brown shirt, olive pants, purple socks. Horribly confining shoes with the mysterious word Keds on the sides. The clothing was all cotton and smelled of mildew.

  Kerebawa dared to look out the window; maybe he could see God. But no, o
nly the sun-splashed water below, coarse and silvery gray, and the skimming shadow of the plane itself.

  He looked back into the plane when he heard the cockpit door latch. Barrows was wandering back to him, bald head sunburned and big belly loosely hidden behind an untucked shirt. A couple of days of beard darkened his face.

  “If you don’t beat all,” Barrows said, and dropped down a few seats away. He looked at Kerebawa and shook his head. “You know, I could get in all kinds of trouble hauling you into the country like this. Won’t be using that passport Angus got you. No visa. No customs clearance.”

  Kerebawa frowned with confusion. This was mostly gibberish.

  “Papers,” Barrows said, and that got the point across. “An illegal alien, that’s what you’ll be.”

  “I will disappear before anyone can ask me for them.”

  “Yeah, I believe that much. Lucky for you, we’re flying into a smaller airport outside the city. Miami International, you’d probably never make it out of that place alive.”

  Kerebawa said nothing.

  “Why are you doing this?” Barrows asked, eyes narrowing. “What does this have to do with Angus dying?”

  “I must find something for him. I promised.”

  Barrows grinned wryly, shook his head. “Promise to a dead man. Don’t that beat all. He was really a good friend to you, wasn’t he.”

  Kerebawa smiled, gazed up into the plane’s roof. “He came when I was a child. The elders say he was funny then. They say he was very foolish. They could talk him into giving away all his goods for no trade in return. But he learned to speak like us. And then to think like us. I wish I remembered him then.”

  Barrows smiled and nodded along. “He was a good guy. A little crazy toward the end, but a fine man.” The fat pilot dug one hand into his pants pocket, produced a wad of green paper.