The Transmigration of Bodies Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’d made up his mind. The Redeemer got to the corner store, made sure Baby Girl was okay, and she was—pallor and little-lamb panting were as much a part of her as eye-color—then went to sweet-talk lover boy.
    Hey, hey, amigo, listen up a minute. I got no dog in this fight, okay, I just want to say one thing and I’ll be on my way. Cool? Listen, man, I’m with you, I know what it’s like—respect, that’s what it’s all about, and it’s your girl those lowlifes got socked away in there, not theirs, right? Thing is, tho, people don’t see you been disrespected if you don’t make a fuss. Times it’s better to let things slide and come off like a king, comprende? All I’m sayin, a badass ain’t the one to raise his voice but the one with no need to—just think on it. And the boyfriend not only thought on it but thanked him and heartily shook his hand before shouting into the store: But we ain’t through, Baby! And sure enough, two weeks later they were back together. That was no longer his problem. The Redeemer sweet-talked only as much as he had to. Let people get in all the tight spots they want; he’d be out of a job if he started passing judgment on their vices. That same night, when he took Baby Girl home, each time he asked her what the boyfriend had done, she said Nothing, señor, honest, I just didn’t want to go with him.
    He helped the man who let himself be helped. Often, people were really just waiting for someone to talk them down, offer a way out of the fight. That was why when he talked sweet he really worked his word. The word is ergonomic, he said. You just have to know how to shape it to each person. One time this little gaggle of teenage boys had gone to the neighbor’s on the other side of the street and stoned the windows and kicked the door for a full half-hour, shouting Come on out, motherfucker, we’ll crack your skull, and the pigs hadn’t deigned to appear; that was one of the first times the Redeemer had done his job. He went out, asked in surprise how it was they’d yet to bust down the door and added You want, I’ll bring you out a pickax right now, and that sure calmed them down; see, it’s one thing to front, to act like a big thing, but burning bridges, well that’s a whole ’nother thing. Soon as he saw what was what the Redeemer added: Tho, really, why even bother, right? Man’s in there shitting himself right now, and they all laughed and they all left. That was when the Redeemer learned that his talent lay not so much in being brutal as in knowing what kind of courage every fix requires. Being humble and letting others think the sweet words he spoke were in fact their own. It worked on others but not on him. He’d met politicians who could believe whatever came out of their mouths as long as others believed it too. He tried to learn how but could never forget lies. Especially his own.
    He trusted Dolphin—or trusted him as much as anyone who’d been a buzzman for twenty-five years can be trusted—but the Las Pericas thing was prickling his neckhairs. What was up with that? He decided to ask Gustavo, a sharp-witted lawyer who knew the ropes and had been untying the city’s secrets for decades. He called, but a woman’s voice said he wasn’t in and who knew when he’d be back.
    He needed someone to watch his back. He called the Neeyanderthal and climbed back in the Bug to go get him.
    The Neeyanderthal was an entrepreneur of sorts: it was all bidness for the Neeyanderthal. Everywhere you look, he liked to say, looks like wheels and deals. He bought old cell phones that he sold at new prices to credulous clients, organized office pools at places he didn’t work, and shuffled the cash flow to keep all his balls in the air: he smuggled shit in, sold intel, rented his house out as a place for petty crimes to go down. He never had any money. Instead his rackets seemed designed to prove he was cleverer than everyone else, to bring him doses of euphoria followed