Fish by Mark Jacobs

In a weedy patch alongside the base of the iron steps leading up the Rua Loira, a woman in a bright blouse is frying sardines on a brazier. The tang of smoking fish and burning oil rises in a cloud of fragrant expectation. As the mild June evening comes on, the Alfacinhas are out on the streets of Lisbon celebrating Saint Anthony. Music everywhere, and drinking, and dancing in stone plazas with walls like canyons. In the city’s carnival of happy feelings, an American reporter is pursuing a story.

The woman has a look of demure concentration, hunkered over the fire. She waves the trident with which she spears her frying fish and asks Jack Keane if his heart is okay.

“Why do you want to know?”

She taps her chest with a balled fist, like a sinner confessing.

“People say it’s the steepest climb in Lisbon.”

Jack studies the prospect. The stone houses along the street pile themselves like boxes, creating and sustaining the illusion that they might tumble down any second.

“I’ll be okay.”

“You want a sardine before you go up?”

He buys and eats one slowly, the woman watching. She hands him a paper napkin to clean his hands.

“American?” she wants to know.

He nods.

“We used to love America,” she says. Her voice is flat. “Your country was in our dreams. What happened?”

Jack has nothing to say to that. In his work, he hears it a lot. He checks his phone for the time. No need to hurry, but a wire of anxiety vibrates just perceptibly in him. He climbs the steep street, breathing heavily as he goes up, stopping a couple of times. His fortieth birthday is a month off. His body knows that he is mortal.

At the top of Rua Loira, he reaches a cobbled thoroughfare running in rough parallel with the Tagus River, which is visible far below like density itself, collecting the darkness as it falls. People are partying up here, too. They travel in small convivial herds. Going past him, a woman with frizzed red hair stops to offer him a hit from her drink, which is fruity and sweet.

Jack sips through the straw. “Obrigado.”

She brushes his cheek with wet lips.

He crosses the street and discovers the entrance to a path going downhill like the jags in an abbreviated lightning bolt. It’s made of hard dirt into which steps are hacked. No handrail. It must be treacherous when it rains. Even now, nobody bothers taking this rough way from one place to the next. He takes the dirt steps down to a flat spot, clear of trees and brush, where an iron bench waits. He sits on the bench. Streetlights coming on across the Lisbon hills announce their presence at the festival.

Waiting, Jack takes a locket from the pocket of his jeans. Inside is a picture of a young Moroccan girl. Yasmeen was twelve when she died. It’s just dark enough now that he aims the light from his phone at the locket in order to make out her face. He remembers someone saying once that all dead children look like saints. Likely that’s true. In any event, Yasmeen’s luminous dark eyes, her high forehead, and astonished expression give the angels something to shoot for. After a moment, he puts away the locket.

And then, as if from nowhere, here stands the go-between. Barulho. He has promised through an intermediary to lead Jack to a man in perpetual shadow known as Peixe. Fish. Jack has done some homework. Baltasar Gil runs one of the most successful people-smuggling operations in the Mediterranean. Warrants for his arrest exist in police files in all the countries the big sea borders, and at Interpol.

Barulho is a small man, fastidiously constructed. His nails are impeccable. His clothes are expensive. Leather loafers with woven uppers put his feet at their ease. His black hair shapes itself naturally into ringlets. A gold chain of tiny links hangs around his neck. He is smoking, with obvious pleasure, a Gitanes.

“Senhor Keane.”

The American stands. They shake hands.

“I’m told you would like to speak with Mr. Gil.”

A nod.

“May I ask why?”

“I’m a reporter. I want to interview him.”

His gesture of slight surprise is affected.

“I doubt Mr. Keane will want to speak to a member of the press.”

“I would like to see him anyway. Face to face. Perhaps, when we speak, he will change his mind.”

Barulho shrugs. It’s a punctilious gesture, meant to absolve himself of responsibility.

Jack’s Portuguese comes by way of Spanish. It’s serviceable but not good enough to nail the accent. This go-between might be Brazilian or North African. On the other hand, he could be Portuguese.

“What newspaper do you work for?”

“It’s an online publication called brainchild.com.”

“And your interest in Mr. Gil?”

Be vague, Jack reminds himself, be forthcoming.

“I cover the Mediterranean. Anything that comes up, whatever my editors believe is newsworthy. I go where they send me.”

It’s not quite true. He has great latitude in what he covers.

A last drag on the French cigarette, then Barulho tosses the butt.

“What about you?” Jack asks him.

“Me?”

“What is your interest in taking me to meet him?”

 “I used to work for him.”

“Used to?”

“We had a disagreement. The relationship ended badly.”

“And yet you live.”

A smile creases his face. His enjoyment is genuine.

“Regardless what you may hear in the media, Baltasar Gil is not a homicidal maniac. He is a businessman.”

“Yet surely you run a risk.”

Barulho shakes his head. “I have reasons to make myself useful to the man. Shall we go?”

Jack nods. It comes to him suddenly that he is the one running the risk.

“Our way is down,” says Barulho, pointing downhill. “Unfortunately, there is no railing.”

Without a railing, Jack follows him down.

***

In the St. Paul hospital, after Mickey Keane’s operation, Dr. Hakim came to the waiting room to deliver Jack the good news.

“We removed your father’s tumor,” he reported, “and I am quite confident we got all the nasty stuff. Mr. Keane will have to be monitored, of course, but his prognosis is excellent. He is still asleep. A nurse will let you know when you can go in.”

There was a human tinge to his professional optimism, a warmth Jack found appealing.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jack was sitting at the head of his father’s bed, holding the old man’s hand. The two were close. They had been an insoluble unit of two since Vivette, Jack’s mother, left the house when he was a boy. Mickey was haggard, lying on his back, but his long white hair was the mane of a lion, and he was animated.

“Looks like maybe I beat the odds,” he told his son, his voice reassuringly hoarse. It was always hoarse.

“No maybe about it.”

“Shit. I got a few hands left in me.”

Mickey Keane had spent his formative years dealing poker and blackjack at a succession of Las Vegas casinos. Life as a game of chance was not a metaphor for him; it was all the explanation anybody needed for the things, shitty or golden, that came a person’s way.

“I’m gonna be fine,” he told Jack. “Go back to work. Nail the bastards. Write something that will knock your readers’ socks off.”

“I’m in no hurry, Pop. I’ve built up plenty of vacation time.”

When it was time for Jack to leave, Mickey drew his son’s hand to his lips and kissed it.  Then, as Jack was leaving the hospital, Dr. Hakim caught up to him in the hall. He invited him back to his office, where they drank tea in bulbous, small glasses with lots of sugar, stirred with tiny gold spoons.

“Your father told me you are a foreign correspondent. He is proud of you, as I’m sure you know. He speaks with great enthusiasm of your work.”

Idrissa Hakim was somewhere in his forties and had a vigorous look. There was no gray in his beard. He was unusually tall. His bony frame belonged to a runner. His face was placid. His dark eyes had seen all the suffering a single individual needed to see and reflected something that looked like patience but went deeper.

“Foreign correspondent makes it sound like more than it is,” Jack told him. “I’m a reporter.”

“And you cover the Med.”

“That’s my beat.”

“All the countries?”

“Yes, all the countries. Are you asking for a reason?”

He was.

“I have a brother, younger than I. This is in Morocco, where I was born. Farouk is simple. Do you know what I mean by that?”

Jack nodded. He was being taken into confidence. When he interviewed people, this was the point at which the story began to get interesting.

“Despite his debility, Farouk is able to work. He has a job in a tire shop. When I left Morocco to study medicine—I attended the University of Buffalo, which taught me about snow as well as medicine—my brother became depressed. I still don’t know quite how the depression led him to make the horrible decision he made.”

“Horrible how?”

“He made up his mind to send his daughter to Europe. Illegally, as a refugee, a migrant. The terminology doesn’t matter. A better life, he went around telling everyone. Yasmeen deserves a better life than I can give her. He was so pleased with himself; he puffed up like a rooster.”

He took a gold locket from the top drawer of his desk. Inside the locket was a picture of his niece. She had drowned in the Mediterranean on a risky crossing when a freak storm made being out on the sea more of a gamble than anyone had the right to assume on her behalf.

“I have made some inquiries. The trafficker is a man by the name of Baltasar Gil. Do you know about him?”

“I do not. I’ve covered trafficking in the Mediterranean, but not recently.”

The doctor frowned. He looked out the window. It was May in Minnesota. Exuberant spring green filled the framed vista.

“I am a medical man,” he told Jack. “A man committed to saving and healing, and relieving people’s pain. Still, if he were sitting across from me now, in the chair you are sitting in, I would kill Baltasar Gil.”

“I guess I don’t blame you.”

“Really? Do you mean that, Mr. Keane?”

“Jack. Yes, I mean it.”

The American was still holding the locket. He looked at Yasmeen again. She looked back at him. She knew something was wrong.

“I cannot kill the man,” Dr. Hakim said. “I know that, of course, I know it. I understand it, I accept it. Nevertheless.”

“What?”

“If Gil were to be arrested and prosecuted, and sent to prison for the rest of his life, I would feel a partial satisfaction. In the proper jurisdiction, he could be tried for murder. Such a thing would be well worth doing.”

“I assume the police are looking for him. They must be building a case against him.”

“I assume the same thing. Still, it seems to me that a thorough journalistic exposé might accomplish some good. At any rate, it would focus the attention of the authorities.”

They looked at each other across the desk, on which Jack respectfully placed the locket, its cover closed to hide the vanquished light. Two days later, UPS delivered a small package to him in care of his father. Inside was a gold locket similar to the one Idrissa cherished, containing a copy of the same picture of his niece Yasmeen.

***

At the foot of the unpaved street, they hit a narrow one that has been freshly macadamed. You can still smell the tar. Barulho leads the way along a high sidewalk. Jack follows, a step behind. They do not converse. Keep your eyes open, Marcelo counseled him, setting up this meeting. If something doesn’t look right, make yourself scarce. Trust your gut and move fast.

Marcelo is a Lisbon journalist. Foreign correspondents hire him when they are in the country working on a story. They come to him for his connections, for the context he provides, the networks of interlocking interests he has diagrammed and stored in a vast warehouse of memory. A couple of years ago, the Times wanted to put him on retainer, but he turned them down. He would accept no restrictions on his freedom of movement. He is sixty, possibly older. He is rumpled and short-tempered. He growls more often than he speaks. In his work, conspiracy theories have become demonstrable facts.

Jack follows Barulho up the steps of an old-fashioned house with a broad verandah. On either side of the front door hang red lanterns of the sort one sees decorating the walls of Chinese restaurants. The go-between enters first but holds the door for the American.

Down a dark hall to a large room against whose brocaded walls rest fat upholstered sofas. On the sofas sit women, mostly young and mostly Asian, although there are two who look to be from Africa. They are dressed in all manner of silk: pajamas and robes and skimpy shorts-and-blouse combos. Their sandals, for the most part, are bejeweled. Their long, vulnerable legs give them the aspect of shorebirds.

Barulho invites Jack to take an unoccupied seat.

“I’ll be right back. Make yourself comfortable while I check on something.”

Before he has disappeared into an adjoining room, a woman with raven hair in tight braids like well-behaved pets is carrying a bottle of Suntory whiskey and a glass on a silver tray to Jack.

“No thank you,” he says.

She ignores him, gravely pouring a generous shot. She might be Chinese. She says something in unintelligible Portuguese and shuffles back to what he presumes is the kitchen.

He tastes the whiskey but sets the glass on a side table. Barulho is soon back. His expression is bemused as though wishing he could tell the American something he unfortunately cannot. He takes a seat next to Jack, and the woman with braids delivers him a whiskey of his own. He lifts the glass and studies the tawny liquid, slowly tilting the glass and swirling the whiskey.

“Belo.”

He sips as a connoisseur sips.

“Sorry about that,” he tells Jack. “My intel was off.”

“Meaning you don’t know where Gil is.”

“That’s not what I said. Relax, Jack, we will find your man. Meantime, we have a few minutes to kill. Do you see someone you like? The experience can be as quick as you like, or as slow.”

Jack shakes his head. For the first time this evening, anger comes close to getting the better of him.

“Are you sure?” Barulho wants to know. “Courtesy of the house. I know the proprietor. There’s a girl from Mozambique who has brought me to the edge of Heaven on more than one occasion.”

“Not interested.”

Barulho shrugs.

“Suit yourself.”

They leave the brothel walking. At the first intersection, they wait for a taxi on the corner of a broad boulevard. Because of the festival, cabs are in short supply. Some of the drivers have taken the evening off. The vehicles of those who have stayed on the job are jammed with rolling parties. Shrieks of pleasure issue from their windows, going by.

Waiting, Jack asks Barulho, “What happened between you and Gil?”

“You think I’m nuts? I don’t want to wind up in your newspaper.”

“Off the record.”

“That means you don’t use it?”

“Yes, that’s what it means.”

 “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“It wasn’t about money, if that’s what you are thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything. I have an open mind.”

“It had to do with a woman.”

“And you still think the friendship can be fixed?”

“It’s not a friendship.”

He seems to want to aggravate the American with gnomic responses to straightforward questions. It’s a game he can win. Finally, they flag down a taxi unencumbered with passengers. Barulho sits next to the driver and mutters an address. Sitting in the back, Jack can’t even guess at it. He pays careful attention as they drive through the city, but the truth is, he has only a rough idea where they began and no idea where they wind up. It’s a haul. Thirty-six minutes. The house in front of which the cabbie stops appears to be past the city proper, on the fringe of a suburb of some sort with a mix of small businesses and private residences.

Getting out of the taxi, Barulho grunts. It’s a neutral sound, not useful as an indicator.

Once again, Jack follows him up a short walk. As they approach the house in the darkness, which is complete now, a man with a Kalashnikov steps out of clumped shrubbery and blocks their way. A conversation follows. It sounds like Portuguese, but the sentences are slangy and fast. The man with the rifle gives way, and Barulho gestures to Jack to come inside with him.

Up the porch steps. The front door opens to them.

The house, whose interior walls are covered with red and purple and green wallpaper in abstract patterns, is an arsenal. There are guns everywhere, in cases and boxes, arranged in a row on the coffee table. Half a dozen men in camo and black are visible on the first floor, moving restlessly and talking in low voices. Jack cannot guess what their job is. There must be a need for armament in the people-smuggling business, or else Fish is branching out into another illegal line. Or, maybe, the house belongs to somebody else.

It’s not the right time to ask. The anxiety with which Jack left his hotel room, early in the evening, now feels more like fear. Trust your gut, Marcelo told him. Right now, his gut is sour. This is a mistake, made in response to a sympathetic uncle’s heartfelt plea.

In fact, Jack should have known better. He’s an outsider. He cannot untangle the story’s threads in a single visit. Gil is a spider of a criminal, sitting securely at the center of a web. The web is a maze of sticky strands. As soon as he can, Jack will call Basma, his editor in London. I’m lifting the lid, he’ll tell her, but I can’t see inside. It will be her call whether he sticks with the story or drops it. At the same time, he imagines Farouk, the doctor’s younger brother, entrusting Yasmeen to a man who makes any promise the tire-repair man would like to hear.

Barulho has disappeared again. A stocky man in tactical black brings Jack a cup of coffee on a saucer. His hair is cut short, his face is just wide enough to contain his smile. He points the American to a chair in the living room, near the coffee table piled with guns. He says something in friendly Portuguese that comes out in Jack’s stressed imagination as Pull the plug, you idiot.

He has had some close calls. A couple of scrapes, several chances to get himself hurt, following a lead, and the story to which the lead belonged. Nothing like this.

Rainy day jazz is playing, not too loudly. It’s music you want to listen to lying in bed with your lover.

The particulars of the moment conflict, or there are too few of them to make narrative sense. He places the cup and saucer alongside an AR-15. Stands. Makes his way to the door. No one appears to notice, or to care.

Out.

He walks fast but not fast enough to outpace the black SUV that coasts to a stop next to him. The passenger-side window comes down.

“Did you get tired of waiting?”

Jack says something he hopes accuses Barulho of giving him the run-around.

“I’m sorry you see it that way. I have just now spoken with our friend. As it happens, he is down by the river. At the marina, on his boat. He insists he will speak with you. Off the record, as you put it. It’s your choice, Senhor Keane: will you see him? If not…” He shrugs. “Água sobre a represa.”

Water over the dam.

Jack gets into the car. Not because of Dr. Idrissa Hakim, or his simple brother, or even because of beautiful, doomed Yasmeen. He gets in because he is stubborn. You’d make a lousy card player, his father used to say. You wanna win, Jack, you gotta know when you’re losing.

“You hurt my feelings,” Barulho says when Jack is sitting next to him. He nods to the driver, who puts the car in gear and moves forward.

“Fuck you,” Jack tells him in English.

Shoulders shrug.

“I should have known.”

“Known what?” Jack asks him.

“That Baltasar would be on the water.”

“I guess there’s a reason they call him Fish.”

“He grew up on the sea, or so they say. Spent every waking minute on the water.”

“Where?”

“That’s a question for him, when you see him. He knows boats, knows the sea, understands weather.”

Down at the docks, the smuggler’s pleasure craft is sleek and black, maybe forty feet in length. It rides high in the water, tethered to its slip. It looks fast. On the shapely bow in white letters is written Minha Paixão. Boarding the boat does not seem smart to Jack. On the other hand, he has come this far. If the man will talk to him, answer a few questions—on the record or off—Jack will have something to go on. With persistence and luck, he might be able to write the story Idrissa Hakim hopes he will write.

Reluctantly, he goes up the gangplank.

“Let’s go below,” suggests Barulho.

Jack looks around. There must be some sort of crew on board, but they do not show themselves. Why not? He follows the go-between down the hatch to a galley with gleaming walls of paneled wood. From two of the walls, padded leather benches have been folded open. On one of the benches is a woman. She stands.

“This is Olivia. She’s from Bahia and has no intention of ever going back, do you? Olivia, this is Mr. Keane. He’s American, he’s a journalist. You should be impressed.”

Olivia is young. She does not acknowledge Jack. Her shoulders are thin, giving her a fragile look that is almost certainly misleading. Her face is a heart. Her black hair is a halo. Her dark eyes assess the American with what she hopes is scorn. She is dressed for a party, wearing more than enough makeup for any social occasion. Her blue eyeshadow manages to caricature female beauty.   

“We’re here to see Baltasar,” Barulho tells her.

For an instant, less than an instant, her face betrays confusion. Not much, but it’s enough for Jack to see his mistake. What a fool. Olivia’s eyes widen, her mouth opens. Her teeth are small and perfect. She says nothing.

“Be a good girl,” says the man who has presented himself as a conduit to the smuggler of desperate people. “Tell Baltasar we’re here. We’ll be up on deck. Bring us something to drink, and algo para petiscar.”

She nods but doesn’t make a move. Her hands move restlessly. As they squirm, Jack notices a small tattoo on the inside of her left wrist. Stylized but unmistakable. A fish. He follows the man he now recognizes up the steps onto the deck. As they step out of the hatch, the boat’s engine turns over. It’s a throaty sound, the sound of power held in check.

Someone has cast off the lines.

“I thought we might take a cruise.”

Jack shakes his head. “Not interested.”

“Um passeio is all, just a jaunt. I think better – I feel better – when I’m on the water. I like to be moving.”

Jack is peripherally aware of a man, maybe two, in the shadows on the bridge. You can feel it when you’re being watched.

A floodlight on the dock casts a disintegrating plate of light on the Minha Paixão. It’s enough to make visible the look of mutual recognition that passes between Jack and Baltasar Gil.

“To answer your question,” Gil tells him, “I was born in Madeira.”

“Stop the boat.”

“Brainchild, wasn’t that the name of your newspaper? What sort of circulation does it have?”

The boat has eased out of its slip. Despite the engine noise, it makes an impression of competent stealth. The night is cool, the sky is an abandoned battlefield.

“Never mind,” says Gil. “It’s not the New York Times, is it?”

I’ll tell you one thing, Jackie, me boy. Something Mickey Keane used to like to say. You can always tell the losers. They’re the ones can’t walk away from the table when they’re going bust.

Now. As Olivia comes up through the hatch, balancing a tray with drinks and snacks, Gil glances in her direction. Jack moves quickly to the gunwale and jumps over the taffrail.

The water is cold. It shocks his system. He waits for gunshots, but they don’t come. The boat is too close to the docks to chance a commotion. He bobs to the surface and gulps air. Then he goes back under, striking for the lee of one of the big berthed boats farther down the docked row, as far as he can get from Gil’s dark beast. The water is viscous. Its thickness impedes the stroke of his arms. It’s like swimming through time. Time is where the souls of those who have gone under float, endlessly float, in the company of their invisible bones. Jack is no fish, but he can hold his breath a long little while. He swims slowly to save his air.