The Secret of Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

that from now on, she’ll be in charge of the operation. Reynolds says
he doesn’t give a damn who’s in charge, all he wants is to find his son safe and
sound. Your son’s probably been infected by now, says Colonel Landovski. It’s an
odd scene: Landovski takes on the role of “father,” prepared to sacrifice the
boy, while Reynolds takes on the role of “mother,” prepared to do anything to
ensure the survival of his son. A fifth or sixth car pulls up at the corner, but
no one gets out. It’s the Mexicans.
    They recognize the van from the food store, the van in which the
young lovers fled. One of the Mexicans, the one Julie bit, is pretty sick. He’s
running a fever and raving incoherently. He wants to eat. I’m hungry, he keeps
telling his friends. He asks them to take him to a hospital. The Mexican girl
backs him up. We have to take him to a hospital, she says sensibly. The other
two agree, but first they want to find the bitch who bit Chucho and teach her a
lesson she’ll never forget.
    Since we forget everything in the end, I’m only guessing that they
talk about killing her. They’re spurring each other on to vengeance. They speak
of honor, respect, principles, the right thing. Then they start the car and
drive off. At no point do the soldiers show any sign of having noticed them, as
if this ghostly street were a busy thoroughfare.
    In the following scene Julie and young Reynolds are walking over a
bridge. Where can we find a taxi? the boy wonders. Julie announces that she
can’t walk any further. On the other side of the bridge is a phone booth. Wait
for me here, says young Reynolds, and runs off toward the booth, only to find
that there’s no phonebook and that the receiver has been ripped out. Looking
back, he sees that Julie has climbed onto the balustrade of the bridge. He
shouts, Julie, don’t! and starts running. But Julie jumps and her body
disappears into the water, although it soon floats to the surface and is swept
away by the current, face down. The colonel’s son goes down a stairway to the
river. The water is very shallow: a foot, three feet at the deepest. The river
has man-made banks and even the bed has been paved. A homeless black man, hidden
among some concrete pillars down the river, is watching young Reynolds. The
boy’s search brings him near this man, who tells him to give up, the girl is
dead. No, says the colonel’s son, no, and goes on searching, closely followed by
the black guy.
    When young Reynolds finds her, the girl is floating in a pool. Julie,
Julie, calls her young lover, and the girl, who has been face down in the water
for who knows how many minutes, coughs and calls his name. All my fucking life
I’ve never seen anything like that, says the black guy.
    Just then, the Mexicans appear (the verb
to appear
will
appear often in this story), fifty yards away. They’ve gotten out of their car
and are looking on; one is sitting on the hood, another leaning against a
fender, and the girl is up on the roof; only the wounded guy is still inside,
watching or trying to watch them through the window. The Mexicans make menacing
gestures and threaten them with a litany of punishments, tortures and
humiliations. This is getting nasty, says the black guy. Follow me. They enter
the city’s system of sewers. The Mexicans follow them. But the labyrinth of
tunnels is sufficiently complicated for the black guy and the young couple to
lose their pursuers. Finally they reach a refuge that’s almost as welcoming as a
nightclub. This is my place, says the black guy. Then he tells them the story of
his life. The jobs he’s had to do. The constant presence of the police. The
hardbitten life of a North American working man in the twentieth or twenty-first
century. My muscles couldn’t take any more, says the black guy.
    His place isn’t bad. He has a bed, where they lay Julie down, and
books, which, so he says, he’s picked up over the years in the sewers. Self-help
books and books