‘You betcha! Just macha!’ responded Francis, brazening out his mistake, and feeling very foolish.
‘OK, Pyroman, let’s go get lunch. I heard the gong. I heard it go bong, bong, bong!’
Lunch, to Francis’ chagrin, was platanos, which he loathed: fried plantains with corn, dispensed with friendly familiarity by Norelis, the fat Andean cook, who suggested that the boys take a siesta out of the fierce afternoon sun. Edison grunted his disapproval, but offered no alternative. Francis hopefully suggested the pool. ‘Naw. Been there. Done that.’ So that was that. Francis hoped he would be spared party games, but asked timidly about a vintage pinball machine he had seen in the study, only to be told by Norelis that no-one other than Senor Pulvermacher was allowed to touch it. A row of books in the study had briefly tempted him, but he dared not risk Edison’s scorn by taking a closer look.
Edison threw himself on a sofa, yawned, and belched. “If we gonna have a fiesta, I need my siesta!” He then became sullenly silent, lying on the sofa, studying the ceiling, and Francis feared he was himself the cause. He padded across to a mah-jong table and admired the ivory stones and the intricate ideograms on each. He idly arranged them in artistic rows until Edison, watching him, said ‘That’s girly stuff, Frisco.’ Francis checked his watch surreptitiously to discover to his alarm there were still nearly two hours before his father would come to pick him up. Abruptly, his host sat up.
‘Let’s blow this dump, man. Let’s go check out the garage.’ At this promise of movement, Francis followed with alacrity. Jumping a low wall by the servants’ entrance, they headed down the same path, past the shed and the ashes of the fire. Ducking under dense vegetation and fearful of snakes, Francis followed his host to a concrete wall surmounted by razor wire. Edison pointed to a vertical row of stakes he said he had driven into the wall, clambered up and squeezed carefully under the wire before dropping out of sight on the other side. Francis did likewise, and found himself in a parking lot facing a blank wall of the dealership, near the service entrance, and conveniently out of sight of prying eyes and security cameras, which is why, Edison said proudly, he had chosen this route.
‘OK, Frisco Kid. This way to the cars!’ His jaunty breeziness had returned.
But instead of leading Francis to the showroom with its anticipation of gleaming exotic vehicles and smiling salesmen eager to show them to the boss’s son’s friend, Edison opened a dirty side door beneath a dripping air conditioning unit, and ushered him down some steps into a subterranean well in which he could dimly see, to his growing horror, a vision of hell. It was a casualty ward for victims of sudden and savage violence. A shadowy vista of wrecked cars stretched before him, hideously deformed into grotesque caricatures of their former selves. It was an abattoir, a charnel house, a place of death.
