Holy City by Guillermo Orsi Read Free Book Online Page B

pallid; now his skin is transparent. All he wants is somewhere to spend the night: any corner, the dog kennel if necessary. “I don’t have a dog.”
    â€œWuff, wuff,” he says, managing to bring a smile to her face, smothered with creams to make her look young. “I’ll tell you in the morning. Go to bed now.”
    â€œYou could be dead by morning. The refugees who come here seem to have a tendency to disappear.”
    Curiosity to find out what Verónica means has the effect of loosening Pacogoya’s tongue.
    â€œUntil now everything had been fine. Fifteen years living off it and not a drop of blood.”
    â€œLiving off it” meant the tourist guide was a low-level dealer practicing low-intensity corruption, the only explosions coming with sex.
    â€œSo who’s spattered you with it now?”
    He has no idea. All he can do is tell her what happened and curse the dealer, the Uncle who loves him like a nephew, for sending him into that bloody lions’ den—to the armpit of the world, a place called San Pedro.
    â€œSan Pedro is Saint Peter, so you must have been close to paradise. I know the town, it’s a pretty place, surrounded by olive groves and with a beautiful view of the river.”
    â€œWell then, paradise must be next door to hell.”
    *
    He has a hard time finding the address.
    He has driven there at 180 k.p.h., dodging lorries and buses, forcing his way past other drivers, as if he was already aware that someone in the place he is aiming for is bleeding to death.
    He finally turns into the street. A dirt track. Its name is on a hand-painted sign, although in reality the road is little more than a line crossing a grid of bare lots, scarcely half a dozen small, poor-looking, unfinished houses. Stray dogs watch Pacogoya’s red Porsche go past—slowly, bouncing over the potholes. He tells himself he ought to have left it in his garage and rented something less ostentatious, but a nagging voice told him he had to get there as quickly as possible, without even pausing to think: after all, he could have got the drugssomewhere else. No, he had been with the Uncle so many years now, he trusted him.
    â€œTrust makes you relax. It can be deadly,” he says to a Verónica whose indulgent gaze for some reason reminds him of the dogs in San Pedro.
    It is the fifth house along the dirt track called the Limes. A house every hundred meters; five hundred meters and nothing more than that hand-painted sign at the start. Groves of fruit trees at the far end. An intense perfume of oranges seeps into the Porsche, reminding Pacogoya he must have the bodywork looked at. Maybe rust was getting into it, and he cannot allow such an expensive car to go to rack and ruin.
    There is a number, also painted on a piece of wood from a fruit crate: 59. Alongside the nondescript house stands a Ford Falcon, which must already have been ancient by the time they were used to “disappear” people during the dictatorship. From its design and the shape of the bonnet, Pacogoya calculates it is from the 1960s. It probably does not even work and has been left there for time or tramps to strip the carcass.
    He claps his hands: there is no bell for him to ring. Better to pass for a Bible seller than shout who he is when he has no idea who might be inside. It is a fine winter morning; the sun is as hot as in January, but the air is cool. The kind of day it would be nice to be greeted by a friendly face, to be asked in for a cocktail beneath the climbing vine in the garden, to leave with the gift of a bag of oranges.
    â€œSan Pedro oranges are really sweet and juicy,” Verónica chips in.
    No-one comes out of the house; not even a dog. The ones in the street have lost all interest in him and gone back to their fleas. No neighbors either. Or children. And too late, Pacogoya realizes there aren’t even any birds.
    He takes a couple of steps back, still facing the shut