Luke reached over the front seat and handed the cab driver another hundred-quetzal bill, then leaned back and pulled his brimmed cap lower on his forehead.
He needed his passport, and to do that, he had to find the little urchin. For the past hour he had ridden up and down mostly unpaved streets while thinking about his encounter with the assailants. Was it anything more than a coincidence, a random robbery? He hadn’t told anyone where or how he would enter Guatemala, not even Sammy.
After the robbery attempt, Luke had carried the Israeli through a half-dozen narrow alleyways separating a disorderly collection of buildings. They emerged onto an adjoining street and hailed a filthy little cab whose driver smirked knowingly when Luke used gestures to indicate that his friend was drunk. He had pointed to Ari’s guidebook and shown the driver the motel that his travel companion had underlined. After stuffing a wad of money into the Israeli’s pocket, Luke handed the driver three times his requested fare.
He’d watched Ari’s cab disappear into traffic before hailing another cab to begin his search for the street urchin. Except for the thermonuclear headache that was waiting for him on the other side of a long sleep, the Israeli was going to be all right.
Luke tried not to think about how easily the killing had come back to him. When threatened, his humanity had fallen away like a loose-fitting robe, and the natural-born killer had revealed himself.
The late afternoon sun was glowing orange when he finally spotted the boy. The little imp was shining a pair of shoes on the sidewalk outside a tavern, just two streets over from where the assailants had snared Luke.
He trailed the boy on foot for the next thirty minutes, watching from a distance as the urchin traveled in a pattern that resembled the spokes of a wheel, always returning to the same tattered one-story building at the hub of his movements.
The boy was thick-bodied and had a protuberant belly that was oddly man-like despite his short stature. He resembled a miniature Buddha and had an inefficient waddling gait, leaning side to side with each step like an aging dockworker with bad hips. But his physical appearance was deceptive. He had a way of disappearing like a mosquito into a shadow. Every time Luke’s eyes left the boy, even for just a second, he vanished into a crowd.
It was unnerving, and he decided to seize his next opportunity to snatch the boy. That happened when the urchin emerged from his third visit to the ragged building. The boy stepped out the front door, glanced over his shoulder at the horizon, and walked toward the open-air bar where Luke was sitting behind a large clay planter.
There was only one other patron in the bar’s terrace when Luke reached out from behind the planter and grabbed the boy, lifting him off his feet and pulling him over a wooden railing that encircled the terra-cotta patio. The shoeshine box fell onto the tiles and its hinged top split in two. The boy’s expression told Luke that he knew what had happened to the muggers; his eyes looked like two large eggs popping out of a hen.
The lone customer sitting on the other side of the patio let out a drunken giggle as Luke placed the boy in the seat next to his own.
“Please, boss,” the boy said in a squeaky voice. “I glad you got away.”
“You’re going to return my passport, right?”
The boy’s head nodded like a piston engine at full throttle.
“Good. Let’s go.”
Another staccato burst of nods.
Luke scooped up the remains of the shoeshine box and held the boy’s hand in a tight grip as they walked toward the building that appeared to be his base of operations. The structure had no particular character: beige stucco with rust stains running down its sides, a corrugated steel canopy across the front, and an open archway entrance that offered no protection from the elements. They entered a small atrium with white tile flooring from which several pieces were missing. Two doors at either end of the lobby opened into large dormitory-style rooms.
The boy whispered, “I give you you wallet and you money, boss. Act like you my friend. If they know why you here, they kick us out. Please, boss.”
They walked into the large room on the right. A woman in a drab but well-pressed uniform sat at a small wooden desk in the far corner of the room. She looked at Luke, then at the boy.
“Frankie?”
The boy said something to her, but Luke wasn’t listening. He was taking in the room. Eight metal frame beds sat along one wall. All but one had an occupant. All were women. All looked like they were young, though it was difficult to know with certainty because they lived in bodies that were ravaged by disease.
The boy walked over to the second bed, knelt down, and pulled a large green duffel bag from underneath the metal-framed fixture. He opened the zipper and buried his arm up to his elbow, pulling out a small leather satchel as Luke approached.
The woman lying in the bed seemed not to notice any of this. She was a skeleton covered by gray skin, her eyes clouded, her expression trance-like. Each breath looked as if it might be her last. Two flat purple lesions sat on the side of her neck: Kaposi’s sarcoma.
The woman was dying of HIV.
“Here, boss. Here.” The urchin held his hand out to Luke. In it was a U.S. five-dollar bill. “This what they gave me.”
“Do you know this woman?” Luke asked, though he figured he knew the answer.
“Mi madre—my mother.” The boy grabbed Luke’s hand and put the bill into it.
Luke didn’t have to ask the rest of the story. Judging from the neighborhood, it was a good bet that his mother was a prostitute or IV drug user. Maybe both.
The boy pointed to a door at the rear. “I be right back.”
While the urchin rummaged through some trash in the back of the property, Luke looked around the room again. A crucifix hung over both doorways. There was a small stand next to each bed; all were vacant except for the one next to the boy’s mother, which held several trinkets and a vase with one stemmed flower. The crude plaster walls were a maze of swirl lines, but the painted surface had a scrubbed look. The concrete floor had an uneven glaze from what looked like several coats of wax. It was remarkably clean, except for the shoe prints of dust that he and Frankie had brought in with them. Someone cared deeply about these people and their plight.
The boy came up from behind and said, “Here.”
He was holding Luke’s and the Israeli’s passports and wallets.
“Your name’s Frankie,” Luke said.
“Sí.”
Luke took the items from the boy, brushed off some watermelon seeds, and put them into his pocket along with the money. “Frankie, if you steal things, you’re going to die someday — just like those men.”
The boy seemed to think about that. “Shoeshine, not much money. Have to steal. Mi madre need better medicine.”
The picture was coming together. Anything beyond the barest necessities probably had to come from the patients’ families. For all he knew, Frankie might have been his mother’s only means of support.
“How you kill La Cicatriz.”
“What?”
“Cicatriz.” Frankie ran a finger over his eyebrow, mimicking the thief’s scar. Frankie looked to either side, then whispered, “He boss man.”
“Why did he pick me?”
Frankie looked down at the floor. “He no pick you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I pick you. That my job. I find turistas with money.”
Luke didn’t know whether to feel relieved that it was a random robbery, or furious that street thugs were using children to mark their prey. He reached into a pocket and pulled out some of the cash he had taken from the thieves. “Here. This should pay for your mother’s medicine for a while.”
Frankie’s mouth parted. He blinked twice.