La Paz Part Four (mostly)

Remedios cheerfully exited the bowler brothers' house by the front door and turned back around the corner to where Simon was waiting in the sedan. He popped open the driver's side door and settled in with a grunt, noticing the pad Simon was putting away just as he began to turn the key.

“Oh-ho, what’s this? Are you an artist, Simon?”

Simon shook his head, but Remedios insisted on flipping through the pad. The latest was a barebones sketch of the narrow entrance of the alley, with an oval representation of what Simon could see behind the car through the rearview mirror.

“Some excellent lines here, Simon. And in such a short time! I was gone, what, fifteen minutes?”

“Any longer and I would have gotten in trouble with the shading. Gradations elude me.”

“Nah, you captured it. You just need a more interesting subject.”

Remedios started the car, and merged into La Paz’s version of rush hour traffic. Anyone looking straight ahead would have seen the midpoint between the Illampu and Illimani mountains.

Then they took a left exit, and Simon, who thought he might finally be getting his bearings, lost them completely. He was certain that this new neighborhood would have sent his grandmother slinking down in her seat. Sidewalk pedestrians stopped and stared with lazy hostility, and the walls on the crumbling buildings were pockmarked with the remains of posters too incomplete to reconstruct the faces of the politicians and slogans, if that was in fact what they had ever been. There were other cars on the street, but none moved or seemed capable of doing so under their own power. Many were missing some or all wheels, or significant chunks of chassis.

The street narrowed further. Helpfully, the wrecks were now staggered; this one’s rims half sunk into the dirt on the left, that one with the spider web crack in the windshield to the right, and so on, tight but passable. Remedios slowed the car to weave between the left and right wrecks, but not as much as Simon would have, and Simon winced every time the Sedan’s mirror came close to an abandoned car. He just came to realize what it was about the entire situation that unnerved him the most, that final detail that had him leaning toward the center of the car, pressing an imaginary break, and yes, slinking down in his seat, when they emerged from the cluster of buildings to see a two-tiered lot with a grove of gnarled trees at the center.

“They were all facing us!”

Remedios looked over and grinned. “I know, right? It’s like driving into on coming traffic!”

He parked the sedan on the lower gravel ledge and got out slowly, and Simon felt compelled to do the same, wondering as he did so if someone unseen was scrutinizing and tolerating the two of them only as long as they didn’t make any sudden movements. Small clusters of men could be seen on most of the street corners. Occasionally a woman moved in between those clusters, but always far slower than Remedios and Simon. One of those women didn’t move at all, but sat at a card table under an umbrella at the highest point on the upper ledge, which appeared to be Remedios’s destination. Frustratingly, the steep path required lots of careful steps and switchbacks. Even more frustrating for Simon: no sooner did they reach the summit, teetering in triumph, than did his new friend place a firm hand on his shoulder, halting him thirty level yards from the card table.

Simon watched the older man approach the woman and held his breath in tense solidarity for a few seconds until his lungs reminded him how lean the air was up there. Then she laughed at something Remedios had said, sounding to Simon’s ears much like Geneva.

“Simon!” Remedios called. “Ayudame con las patatas pequenas.”

“Potatoes?”

It took nearly an hour for Simon and Remedios to finish filling the trunk and most of the back seat with not-so-pequeno bags of potatoes they carried out from one of the adjacent buildings. Simon was surprised to see a water jug sitting on the Sedan’s roof when they moved to carry out the last bag, and swigged gratefully despite his misgivings about the region’s unfamiliar microbes. Remedios also accepted a drink, but was impatient to be off, so they got back into the car and worked their way back toward the center of La Paz.

They unloaded more than half of the bags at a restaurant on the corner of the Mercado Camacho with help from the restaurant staff, and accepted a free lunch on the premises while the crew prepared for the dinner service. Simon was considered a fluent Spanish speaker in most circles and had even learnt some Quecha in Peru, but he found this Altiplano dialect, with its frequent Aymara words, confusing. He concentrated exclusively on the kitchen manager’s orders and slowly began to decipher some of the more common utterances based on context.

“Well, I’m back.” Remedios said, sitting down next to him at the industrial spool table. “Sorry, I had to take a phone call.”

Simon decided not to tell the man that he had scarcely noticed his departure. “So, where to now?”

Remedios checked his watch. “Two more stops and we’re potato-free. Good thing, too, ‘cause it’s getting late and I’m getting tired of working.” The next stop was a big warehouse on the north side of the city, where they left two bags. The guard who received them gave Remedios an envelope, and both men seemed abashed to be seen doing so.

The last was another restaurant, this time in the middle of a dinner service. With the staff fully engaged, the remainder of the hauling and stacking of potato stacks was left to Remedios and Simon. Dirty and out of breath, they retired to an empty dining room off to the side of the main one and sagged into a booth. A server brought two cups and a pot of coca tea, a casual use of a minor mind-altering substance that no longer fazed Simon they way it had twenty-four hours ago. Remedios evidently preferred solid coca, because he drew a bag out of his leather jacket and packed the green leaves by his molars. He chewed slowly, and then followed Simon’s eyes down to the bag and the envelope he’d inadvertently drawn out with the coca.

“Oh, right. You deserve a share.”

He slipped a short stack of bills out of the envelope and passed them to Simon. It took the younger man a moment to register that the currency wasn’t Bolivian. The bills were Euros, worth… He tried to figure an exchange rate to US dollars and failed, largely because he was simultaneously trying to push them back at Remedios while shaking his head no. Remedios folded his arms and shook his head harder. Geneva, this time wearing blue taffeta dress, took the bills off the table and sat down in the booth next to Simon.

“Better take the money, Simon,” she said, folding the bills and slipping them into Simon’s jeans pocket. “It’s a rare event when Donnie pays on time.”

Still reeling from her entrance, Simon could only tighten his jaw and watch her accept Remedios’s untouched cup of tea and quaff it demurely, peering at them each in turn and politely ignoring the smell of potatoes.

Remedios started to say something, but stopped when his cellular phone rang again. He excused himself, and Simon felt a lump rise in his throat as Geneva’s entire attention shifted to him.

“So what have you two been doing all day?”

Simon swallowed. “Nothing important, really. Just moving potatoes.” His sense of the wrongness of this statement lingered on the edge of his Geneva-addled mind. The money. The scale. His suspicions. But he didn’t have to come to the realization, because the woman next to him was able to take him the rest of the way.

“Of all the.. Damn it, I should have known.” She didn’t sound angry, just resigned. “Simon, you’re not a dumb kid,” she began, but said it like she believed he was borderline. “Why do you suppose they would need you two to haul ordinary potatoes around town?”

Simon wanted to assure her that he wasn’t that naïve, and that he certainly was suspicious about the day’s activities, but just then Remedios returned to the booth with a more somber impression.

“Donnie!” Then she lowered her voice and favored him with a chilly smile. “Did you tell Simon that you made him a drug mule this afternoon?”

Remedios didn’t flinch. “I was looking for a more subtle and calming way of breaking it to him, Ginny, but now that you’ve volunteered, knock yourself out. You’ll have plenty of time to chat without me, ‘cause it turns out there’s somewhere I need to go.”

Geneva squinted at the car keys he was dangling and closed her blue eye completely. “I can’t believe you’re bailing.”

“Believe that I don’t want to, but have to. If I can get free later on I’ll meet you two somewhere.”

He set the keys down in front of her. Geneva frosted him with another smile, but put a dash of mirth into her answer.

“Take all the time you need. Simon and I will have fun without you.”

Remedios chuckled and then patted down his pockets, removing his cell, his bag of coca, an odd electronic device with a LED currently showing a compass, and finally, the envelope, from which he pulled a few more bills and dropped them on the table.

“Simon, take these and get yourself some better clothes. Those jeans are okay, but you need a linen jacket or something. Geneva, can you take him somewhere where they dress non-backpackers?” He quickly stuffed all of the items back into his jacket and hovered over the table in a rare moment of indecision.

“Look, I will catch up to you later, okay?”

Once outside, he moved quickly down the Isabel Montes Avenue, making for the home that used to house Velasco’s mistress.