Boy Kills Man Read Online Free

down and grabbed the guy by his ankles. I had no idea what was going through his mind. I was just glad to see him moving. I took his wrists and together we hauled the body across the tiles. Galán continued to chatter on the phone. As we reached the door behind the counter he cut us a frown. It was as if we were dealing with a sack of rotten watermelons here, messing up the tiles. I looked straight ahead all the way through, hoping and praying that this terrible weight between us wouldn’t suddenly twitch or make any more noise.
    Later, when the flatbed truck pulled up outside the store, followed by a silver 4×4
,
I would hope and pray that he really
was
as dead as can be. Galán had hurried us from the building just as soon as the body and the bat were out of sight. As we left he kept saying that we should go home and tell no one.
    â€˜This didn’t happen,’ was his final word to us, and at the time I almost believed him.
    Leaving the store was like waking from a bad dream. The air seemed so fresh that Alberto and I just stood in the street for a beat and breathed. We both turned with a start when Galán shot the bolt across the door. He flattened his lips at us, there behind the glass, and then flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED.
    We didn’t go home, of course. We took the fire-stairs round the back of our building, and headed straight for the roof. There, we sat against the old extractor hood and smoked some cigarettes. Every now and then, one of us broke the silence with a cough or a muttered
‘mierda,’
but we never looked at each other for more than a moment. I didn’t want to see what was going on behind Alberto’s eyes, and I was scared for him to see into mine. We only stirred when the truck turned up with the big jeep behind it, and that’s when it seemed very real. Peeking over the parapet, we saw two brawny guys climb out of the flatbed and haul a tarpaulin roll off the back. They could’ve been anyone, a couple of rough hands like almost every other migrant in this
barrio,
but the man from the 4×4 didn’t fit. He was wearing a light suit, white sneakers and shades, and moved like someone who didn’t like to dwell too long in one place. I was sure he was going to peel off those glasses and look directly up at us. Instead, the two goons carried the tarpaulin into the alley beside the store and the man followed behind. A side door opened up and we watched him hustle them in, looking left and then right before disappearing from sight.
    â€˜Galán wasn’t lying,’ Alberto whispered, as if he might be heard even from here. ‘He really is connected after all.’

4
    There are two types of people in this city: the poor who scratch a living on street level, and those who have turned to the underworld to survive. Not everyone does so willingly, of course. For every drug don there are dozens of everyday citizens who have decided that it’s better to accept a bribe than see their loved ones go missing. The cops and the judges may be decent people at heart, but with that kind of choice it’s no wonder so many take the money. Most of the time you can’t tell who has links and who needs some.
    We always thought Galán was a bullshitter until he made that call, but it seemed Alberto was right. You only had to look at the party who came to collect the body to know where they had come from. These guys were
gangsters.
Not just street hoods grouped together for safety, but the kind who pulled all the strings in this city. Watching them leave the store from the front, with that tarpaulin roll looking a little heavier now, I felt both terror and awe. They left as quickly as they had arrived, with no fuss or fanfare. Galán waited for the silver jeep to pull away after the flatbed, and then flipped the store sign to show that he was back in business.
    The events of that afternoon went down deep for us both. It became a part of who we were.