Yet the grandest manifestation of Europe’s sudden concern for Barban development was the peninsula’s proliferation of public leisure centers. No more was Edgar forced to battle the elements in long, odious slogs down Rua da Evaporação, wind wahing in his ears and peras peludas gooping the treads of his Nikes. The new fitness multiplex in Terra do Cão contained five squash courts, two indoor tennis courts, and an Olympic-size swimming pool. Alternatively, the vaulting cathedral to physical suffering three blocks from his office was equipped with an array of Stairmasters, LifeCycles, and Concept II Ergometers, all measuring heartbeat, caloric output, and kilometers per hour in red digital readouts. Even better, given that most Barbans’ idea of exercise was— Actually, Barbans had no idea of exercise. Edgar pretty much had the cavernous downtown facility to himself.
But then, the speedball rush that revved his metabolism in the Rat when Grant’s Tomb was bombed had never quite abated. Ever since that evening, standing on a street corner thinking, or waking up in the morning and remembering where he was, had doubled as ad-hoc aerobic exercise. Edgar had now jittered away ten pounds by accident. If anything he looked gaunt, and for the first time in his life watching weight shiver off his frame was unnerving. Still, the blessedly mindless pedaling at the gym with his eyes trained on Portuguese-dubbed ER evoked his old routine in New York and made him feel normal. It made him feel safe.
Increasingly, safe was just what Edgar failed to feel on the streets of Cinziero. These days on a cruise through Terra do Cão (which its residents had now taken to calling “El Terra do Cão”) Edgar’s urban alarm bells did go off. Which was queer, since the neighborhood’s slick new public housing looked almost middle-class. On the other hand, the tidy brick bungalows with double-glazing were soulless, and a little affluence can often be just enough to give people a taste for whatever else they haven’t got.
The photogenic brat who’d first fleeced Edgar for five hundred escudos was now charging two thousand escudos a snap. No longer conscientiously stenciled and overwritten to correct misspellings, graffiti had grown slashing and careless, trailing thick, bloody drips of red spray paint. Its language didn’t run to the cheerfully civilized ADEUS, NORTE AFRICANOS! either, but to the cruder MARROQUINOS CHUPAM O PENIS DO BURROS! or the grisly mortality score-keeping of SOB—3,945/TOALHAS-CABEÇAS—0. In one playground wall mural, the endearingly moronic smile painted on Teodósso o Terrível’s black charger had been crosshatched over with bared white teeth.
Clumps of young men now skulked on corners with passable menace. For wind guards, clear plastic goggles were passé, full jade-green welding masks the rage: industrial, opaque, and occlusive of the entire face. Edgar missed the innocent uncool of high-water bell-bottoms and canary-yellow knee socks. Now they’d opted instead for timeless tough: abused leather and dirty denim. None of the boys played with pinwheels anymore.
The kids’ transformation wasn’t all style. The last time Edgar claimed a bomb from his Terra do Cão phone booth, the finish on the passenger door of the Saab was keyed, more suitably than the juvies could have known, with the jagged letters SOB fifteen inches high.
In Edgar’s reading, the Portuguese were repeatedly described as great-hearts, if suffering from a certain fatalism, dourness, and distinctive saudade—defined in Marian Kaplan’s The Portuguese as “an emotional, fathomless yearning,” perhaps for the Age of Discovery when the Iberian boonies were the center of the world. As descendants of an empire that had hit the skids centuries before and had merely flicked them crumbs when its table was groaning, Barbans had some reason to grouse. Nevertheless, when Edgar first got here, they’d displayed traces of an easygoing and philosophically self-effacing nature. Yet with villainies from embassy bombings to dead dolphins notched on their collective belt, Barbans were rebuilding an empire of a kind, and had become accordingly high and mighty. In recent vox pops, Edgar found natives haughty, touchy, coy, detached, and stuck-up. Having himself goosed them to life, he had a pretty good handle on Barban politics, but local yahoos refused to believe that any outsider could possibly understand their terrible, complicated problems. Not that they felt obliged to understand anyone else’s. If he ever ventured off the subject of their beloved immigration spat and its attendant badness, their eyes glazed like those of vento junkies propped against a deafening wind.
Likewise shopkeepers had originally been good-humored about Edgar’s poor-to-absent Portuguese, and flattered by the few words he’d mastered. Now his regular merchants for frozen lasagna and special-order small-batch bourbon bristled at grammatical errors, and refused to volunteer their patchy school English. Her own Portuguese exquisite, Nicola had remarked that these days locals seemed to get sniffy when she didn’t make mistakes.
Nevertheless, Edgar wasn’t about to take the rap for so abstract a business as a shift in provincial character. If Barbans preened under the eye of CNN cameras, a buried vanity had merely been enticed to the surface. Escalating savagery was harder to finesse.
A dozen Moroccans and Algerians had been tarred and feathered. A whole row of houses in Novo Marrakech was burned to the ground. Lewd graffiti wasn’t restricted to Terra do Cão but was smeared defiantly through immigrant neighborhoods, no matter how many times shame-hunched women in djellabas scrubbed it away. Street-gang clashes between dog-landers and towel-heads now routinely involved knives, and one Terra do Cão teenager who was dating the wrong sort had her waist-long hair hacked to the scalp. Pitched riots between Muslims and Beeps or Cinziero cops were no longer news.
In the early stages of this escapade, just after Grant’s Tomb, Edgar had exulted in his newfound power to dial up headlines at will. Even once he settled into a blasé routine of calling in bomb claims as part of his job description, he could sometimes fully inhabit Barrington’s moral Switzerland and be flushed with not horror but awe—an electrifying recognition of his own sway that raised hairs on the nape of his neck. Like most well-off Americans, who were swaddled in a cotton wool of comfort that made everything they read about seem muffled and far away, in his lawyer days Edgar had begun to lose faith that anything ever happened really, much less that he could make anything happen himself. In Barba, Edgar had discovered the miracle of his own agency, and in truth he was still grateful for that.
But he’d initially been exhilarated by the sensation of control. He could pick that incident, reject another. He was not in the mood for one more atrocity; he was in the mood, rather. Doubtless the same thrill of efficacy engorged genuine terrorists, and in this respect Edgar Kellogg was as real as the best of them. Yet as the streets of Cinziero reverberated with obscene chants and crowded with bigoted placards, homes were torched, and pretty girls lost their hair, while governments fell over themselves to appease an enemy that wasn’t there, Edgar felt anything but in control.
Chapter 31
The Tooth Fairy Gives an Interview
FEELING OUT OF control could make you giddy; it could make you rash. The graver matters grew in Cinziero, the more Edgar inclined toward camp. The SOB had started as a joke, and Edgar was going to force it to remain one if it killed him.
Thus when one more journalist washed up on his threshold at Casa Naufragada begging for an interview with a Real Live Sob, Edgar flippantly said yes. Maybe he was actually getting bored with claiming atrocities. Why else take such a risk?
Well, for several reasons. Tiddling nails on his door, though it was open, Jasmine Petronella arrived self-consciously overdressed—replete with a doublet of artificial pearls—and as a rule journalists showed off by dressing like slobs. Fragile and uncertain, Jasmine first introduced herself as an essayist for the highbrow quarterly Granta, but couldn’t keep her game face. Within thirty seconds, the young woman had confessed to writing on spec; for now, Granta “didn’t know her from corned beef hash.” Unlike most of the add-water-and-stir experts who lounged into Edgar’s office, Jasmine had read every book about Barba she could lay her hands on, including Ansel P. Henwood’s, for which she deserved a medal
. The fact that a girl just out of Northwestern’s journalism school had forked over her own meager funds to fly to this dung-heap where nothing ever happened (or never used to) made Edgar feel responsible—yet more evidence that across the board Edgar’s Dexedrine omnipotence was subsiding to a phenobarbital wooze of self-reproach.
Although Edgar himself contrived to appear tough, assured, and jejune, he found Jasmine’s tentative, hair-messing underconfidence refreshing. Her features a little outsized and asymmetrical, Jasmine had those marginal, “interesting” looks that improved with a few beers. Most winningly of all, Jasmine had never met—had never even heard of—Barrington Owen Saddler, and so couldn’t find Edgar Kellogg a soul-destroying disappointment in comparison.
As for this self-starter’s prospective interview with o soldado, Edgar laid down ironclad rules. Only Jasmine could attend. No photographs. No viewing or direct contact, not even shaking hands. No real names. No recording devices; she’d have to take notes. No questions that might lead to the identity of his source. Half an hour max; Edgar wasn’t sure he could keep up the accent for longer than that.
He arranged to meet the girl outside Casa Naufragada at two a.m., by which time the rest of the hack pack would be safely asleep or stinking drunk. Heartbreakingly, she was still wearing the pearls. He ushered her hugger-mugger into his office, where he’d tacked up a white sheet that partitioned the cubicle in half. Apologizing, Edgar patted her down gingerly for a microcassette—nice build. She was shaking.
“Excited?” asked Edgar.
“Nervous,” Jasmine corrected. “These people . . .”
“You’d be surprised. One-on-one, homicidal sorts can be almost exasperatingly likable. I expect you’ll get on with O Borbulha like a house on fire.”
“O Bore—?”
“O Borbulha. Just a handle.”
She printed meticulously. “What does it mean, like, The Butcher, or something?”
“The Zit. With a face like that, you’d give interviews behind a sheet, too.” Winking, he settled her in his desk chair and headed for the door.
Jasmine grabbed Edgar’s sleeve. “You’re not going!”
“You’ll develop a better rapport just the two of you.” Edgar patted her hand.
“But—with all they’ve done—how do I know—alone in a room . . . ?”
As its puppeteer, of course Edgar couldn’t take the SOB seriously; the numerous other blasé journalists who’d sashayed into this office—for whom a killer was no more than a rent-a-quote with exceptional cachet—had no such excuse. Jasmine, by contrast, thought a killer was scary. That was astute.
“I personally vouch for boil-face,” Edgar promised. “Three’s a crowd. Stay here, I’ll bring him in the back. Half an hour. Don’t worry, I won’t be far away.” Quite.
Edgar scuttled around the hallways, hooking on a pair of Groucho glasses, and ducked into his office through the fire door, all the while picking at a pestersome whitehead on his chin that had inspired his nom de guerre.
The instant he switched on the light to cast his bulbous profile on the sheet in silhouette, Edgar felt like a heel. Jasmine was a nice kid, frightened out of her wits, and she thought this was real. Freshly chagrined, Edgar shit-canned the satirical narrative he’d planned, going for a somber, confessional tone instead. His story of an impoverished childhood and crushing low self-esteem, his desperate efforts to find respectable work as a tradesman that were continually undermined by Algerian illegals who would work off the books, his parents’ loss of their modest house to a Moroccan arsonist because they once dared to invite the noble Tomás Verdade to their home, and his grateful discovery of dignity and purpose when he embraced the cause of his people’s freedom finally built to such heartfelt patriotic fervor that by the time he was through lisping his consonants, shushing his Ss, and trilling his Rs Edgar himself was ready to sacrifice a few hapless, incidental civilians for the high-flown romance of Barban independence.
When Edgar ventured into the Rat the next night, he came upon Jasmine being interrogated by Alexis. Of course, it was no surprise that the kid’s news nose had led her to this bar. Every animal on earth instinctively sniffed out its own kind.
Be that as it may, Edgar had been ready for a night off from babysitting the uninitiated, hoping for a quiet drink with a few cronies who would all get each other’s allusive wisecracks. Besides, he was anxious to be spared the resident hacks’ historically irresistible impulse to dazzle any newcomer with their pyrotechnic command of Barban politics. Having taken on the role of Jasmine’s minder, Edgar felt a little put upon, wondering if he was now duty-bound to protect her from the press corps’ predatory sarcasm. To emphasize that the fledgling was on her own tonight, he sat instead beside Martha Hulbert, who shot him a wobbly smile of gratitude. Clearly his choice of chair meant horribly much to Martha; he hadn’t thought ahead. In fact, as the conversation in progress attested, his foresight was lacking in every respect.
“What exactly did he say?” Alexis was demanding. Regarding any information snatched from her turf as stolen from the New York Times, Alexis rapped the round table, as if insisting that the young lady, caught red-handed, surrender a shoplifted candy bar. Like many an older feminist, Alexis had beaten by joining, and universally treated other ambitious women like impertinent children.
“He talked about his upbringing,” said Jasmine cautiously. “How barren it was, and poor. How kids here absorb without being told that Barbans are dirt.”
Just out of grad school, Jasmine could hardly be expected to keep her only scoop under wraps. Edgar hadn’t precisely sworn her to silence, since he hadn’t quite articulated to himself the dangers of the interview story leaking. He tried to catch Jasmine’s eye. But she was busy fending off Alexis Collier, and there was no use crying over spilled beans.
“You buy that?” Alexis snapped.
“I bought that,” said Jasmine deliberately. “Although it’s a big leap from feeling underprivileged, even despised, to planting car bombs.”
“I’ve had it up to my eyes with the hard-done-by natives and their snot-nosed whining,” Win snarled. “The more Europe pours payola into this sewer, the worse the bellyaching gets. The Sobs are sure to blow a dozen more pregnant schoolteachers off the map because Dogshit Land’s three-million-dollar leisure center doesn’t have an ice rink.”
Jasmine was clearly taken aback. Win looked anything but contrite. He may have despised Tomás Verdade first and foremost, but his sticky black antipathy had oozed like an oil pipeline leak across the entire peninsula. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t attractive, but for years he’d watched pettiness, petulance, and, by all appearances, blind murderousness pay off in spades, and Win Pyre’s vituperation was understandable. All the same, the screwed-up mangle of his face testified to the fact that acid was eating him hollow. The more he sputtered with impotent contempt, the more any casual observer could see plainly that Barba was winning.
“Still . . .” Taking a preparatory breath, Jasmine seemed to realize that she was about to say something Pyre wouldn’t like. “Why not give Barbans independence, if they want it?”
The girl had guts.
“They don’t want it!” Win exploded. “Independence has thirty-five percent support tops!”
“It used to be ten percent.” Jasmine’s body had contracted into a small, dense ball.
“Sure enough, that Creamie fan club keeps adding members,” Martha wedged in. “It’s the damnedest thing. The more people they kill, the more popular they get. Whenever I’ve tried to ingratiate myself, I’ve obviously gone about the project all wrong. I should have skipped the Godiva gift assortments and bought a machine gun.”
“Maybe Barbans don’t all want independence,” said Jasmine, “but most could probably abide it. Meanwhile, nobody else gets killed. Isn’t that all that matters?”
“Is it?” Win’s cheeks bloomed with apoplectic blotches. “So why not hold the world to ransom for whatever you want? If it works? You said you wa
nt to publish your essay in Granta. What if they say no? Tell that quarterly that you’ll keep blowing up shopping malls until they publish your piece. It’s a little thing to ask. One lousy essay in one lousy journal, to save all those people’s lives? Isn’t that all that matters?”
“That’s already happened,” said Jasmine. “The New York Times published the Unabomber’s manifesto at his insistence, in full.”
“News,” said Alexis primly, “but a questionable precedent.” By which she meant that the letter-bomber’s pretentious pseudo-intellectualizing about the corruptions of industrialism took up a whole page of her paper and wasn’t her story.
“We’ve been through this before, Win,” said Martha, cutting her eyes toward Edgar as if to enlist his support. “I started out on your side, totally. Reward terrorist temper tantrums, and you’re asking for more of the same. But I’m starting to question—”
“Hulbert, not you, too!” Win took any passing sympathy with the SOB as a personal betrayal.
“The Sobs have killed almost four thousand people,” Martha persevered. “That’s a lot to pay for principle. What would it cost to give rinky-dink Barba independence? A little face. If we could trade a Barban state for a complete Sob cessation, maybe we’d get the better end of the deal. Maybe it’s a shrewd enough bargain to be worth the embarrassment of caving to creeps. I sure wouldn’t want to die to keep this penis of a peninsula part of Portugal.”
Finished with her recital, Martha turned to Edgar like a little girl curtsying at a school assembly. She want a blue ribbon, or what? Saddler was right. Having your sleeve continually tugged for approval was a nuisance.
“Hard-nosed practicality is the essence of realpolitik,” announced Alexis. “Purism has no place in politics, where you make deals with the devil every day. How many casualties would you sacrifice for your insistence that crime not pay, Win? You must draw the line somewhere.”
“I draw the line,” Win growled irascibly, “at bending over for pig swill. At proposing a separate parliament for halfwits whose first political ‘statement’ is sure to be blowing up the legislature building. At revising a whole canon of immigration law to suit kitty litter. At sending some gimcrack Gestapo rousting wetbacks house-to-house just to placate animate garbage. That’s where I draw the line.”