American Visa by Juan de Recacoechea

Author:Juan de Recacoechea [Recacoechea, Juan de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Crime
ISBN: 9781933354200
Amazon: 1933354208
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2007-04-01T12:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Chapter 8

All the noise and people in that Bolivian Calcutta were making it impossible to think straight. At the head of Figueroa Street, steps away from Plaza Alonso de Mendoza, I chanced upon El Yungueño, a small dive filled with lushes who were always celebrating something, be it their misery or their happiness. A tall, dark-skinned woman with a supple figure was standing and drinking beside the bar in the company of two lowlifes dressed in jackets and jeans. As I entered, the woman winked at me suggestively. The guys, cheap pimps for sure, stood watch over their charges and pretended not to see me. The owner of the bar was a hefty, slovenly lady who could easily have passed for the driver of a twenty-ton truck. She poured me a beer without even asking.

I started to mull things over. Time was short. To carry out my project, I first needed to acquire a lead club, a silent and efficient instrument. A gun was out of the question, since it was going to cost me at least two hundred dollars. Once I had the lead club, the second thing was to draw up a more or less rational plan. It didn’t make sense to do the robbery during office hours because of all the gold sellers hanging around. The ideal thing was to catch Arminda when she wasn’t with Severo; that way, the armed son of a bitch couldn’t blow my brains out. I had a single window for finishing Arminda off with a crushing blow to the neck: between the moment her gorilla-in-training saw her to the apartment and when the rich guy with the Mercedes showed up.

I had it all figured out: Arminda bought the gold with the money the rich guy brought her. When they got together at her apartment, the gold was swapped for dollars, which in turn served to buy more gold. You didn’t need the mind of Stephen Hawking to put two and two together. I wasn’t interested in the gold, only in the dollars.

A second prostitute, a tiny and chubby girl with the expression of a graceless circus clown, joined the others at the bar. One of the pimps started to stroke her back with about as much tenderness as a bear. I needed an accomplice to help me tie up loose ends, but I had to act fast. As I lost myself in thought, a scandal broke out in the street. The police had detained a drunken pickpocket for trying to make off with a woman’s purse. They locked him up in a car and then left with their sirens blasting, as if they had just caught some big shot from the Medellin cartel.

The air seemed to thicken. In the mood for some native victuals, I made my way toward the Uruguay Market. There, I settled onto a stool underneath a plastic tarp and ate an entire chicken. The chicken was so spicy that I was forced to drink a beer.

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