The Guilty Read Online Free PDF

most Mexicans differentiate tattooed Chinese people—the one with the dragon, the one with the knife, the one with the bleeding heart.
    â€œDo you like Peking duck?” asked Triplet C.
    Then they started talking about money. They mentioned a number and my throat seized up.
    I didn’t answer. The triplets were barely thirty years old. Their obesity made them look like radioactive babies from some Chinese sci-fi flick.
    â€œThat’s what you’re worth.” Triplet B scratched his beard. “The Toucans really need you.”
    â€œThe brewery is backing us.” They gestured to the case on the bed.
    At that point, I should have understood they were planning to launder their money with beer. Narcos are so powerful, they’re free to act like narcos. They didn’t need to dress as geography teachers.
    Instead of asking for a few days to consider, I asked the question that would be my undoing:
    â€œAre you thinking of hiring any Argentinians?”
    â€œNo fucking way!” said Triplet A.
    He smiled, and I thought I saw the gleam of a diamond on his incisor.
    I had just turned 33, and I had a fractured ankle. I couldn’t afford to turn down this season in the desert. In the match where I broke my bone, I’d scored an owngoal. “The Last Sensation of Christ,” wrote some snarky reporter, rejoicing in my martyrdom.
    â€œYou’re playing with fire,” Tere told me. I liked that. I liked playing with fire.
    She saw things differently. Anyone who was interested in me had to be suspect.
    â€œThere are no toucans in Mexicali.”
    She kept saying that, day after day, until we stopped talking about toucans and started talking about Argentinians.
    I owe Maradona’s country two fractures, sixteen red cards, and one season on the bench, thanks to a coach who accused me of “prioritizing my trauma.” What I didn’t know was I would owe my divorce to the Argentinians, too.
    Baldy Díaz played on two teams with me. One of those guys whose head was fat with talk; in interviews, he spoke like he’d just come from breakfast with God.
    He had a big mouth, but nothing on him was as big as his cock. You can’t avoid seeing things like that in the locker room. None of this would’ve been important, except Tere knew about it too. About Baldy’s size, I mean. The time she accused me of “playing with fire,” she had just come back from visiting him. Later, I found them in my own bed. It wasn’t the classic situation where the husband arrives home early. “I’ll be home at six,” I told Tere, and at six I found her riding Baldy’s giant cock. It was her way of telling me she didn’t want to go to Mexicali.
    We got divorced through the mail, thanks to a lawyer with five gold rings whom the triplets found for me.
    On the way to Mexicali, I went through La Rumorosa, a mountain pass where the wind blows so hard it flips trucks. Looking down from the cliffs, I could see the remains of crashed cars at the bottom. I felt a weird kind of peace. A place for things to end. A place to end my career.
    I continued as midfielder, but acted more like a fifth defender. I recovered balls at a reasonable rate for the triplets, although more often, I was being recovered from between the opposing team’s legs.
    I got used to playing through the pain. Then I got used to the injections. I played on painkillers more often than a normal body should. But my body isn’t normal. It’s a kicked-in lump. When she was feeling for my nerve with the needle, the doctor talked about my calcified flesh, as if I were turning into a wall. I liked that idea: a wall the opposing team smashes into, a wall on which Argentinians crack open their heads.
    One of the triplets had a white tiger. Feeding it cost more than my salary. I got on the triplet’s good side when I asked him to pay me the same as his pet.
    â€œI have an orca, too,” he