Bloomsday Dead Library Edition

Chapter One: Telemachus (Lima, Peru -- June 15, 6:00 A.M.) State LY Plum P. Buck Mulligan." Hector handed me this message on the cliffs at Miraflores. I set the binoculars on the wall, took the note, and put it in my pocket. Hector was watching my face to see if there was annoyance or even dread in my eyes, but I was giving nothing away. The sun was rising over the Andes, turning the Pacific a pinkish blue. The sky to the east was a long golden gray and in the west the Southern Cross and the moon had set into the sea. I thanked Hector with a nod and put my sunglasses on. Wild lilacs were growing among the cacti and a warm breeze was blowing through the poplars. There was, as yet, no traffic and normally it would be peaceful up here. Just the cliffs and the beach and the whole of the sleeping city behind me. Fog burning off the headland and a few early-morning dog walkers demonstrating that Latin love for miniature poodles and Lhasas. "Lovely, isn't it?" I said in English. Hector shook his head uncomprehendingly. I smiled, watched the usual dazzling collection of seabirds rising on the thermals off the cliffs. Occasionally you'd see an albatross or a peregrine falcon and rarer still sometimes a lost condor or two. The smell of orange blossom and oleander. "Lima has a bad rap, but I like it," I said in Spanish. Especially this time of day before the two-stroke motors and the diesel engines and the coal fires really got going. Hector nodded, pleased with the remark and happy that he'd found me before I retired to bed. He knew that after the night shift I liked to come here with a cup of coffee. Last week I came to watch the first transit of Venus in living memory but mostly it was either to do some amateur ornithology or, he suspected, to stare through the binocs at the pretty surfer girls catching the big rolling breakers at the meeting of the continent and the ocean. Today about a dozen early surfers, all of them in their teens, wearing full wet suits, booties, and gloves. Half of them female, a new feature of the scene in the city. None of them looked like Kit, the surfer girl I'd been forced to kill in Maine a long time ago, but they all reminded me of her -- I mean, that's the sort of thing you never get over. I sipped the coffee, frowned at the sound of a power drill. This particular morning, much to my annoyance, it was not quiet up here. There were a score of grips and roadies building the set for a free concert by the Indian Chiefs. They were working with un-Peruvian noise and diligence and it didn't surprise me at all to see that their supervisor was an Australian. Hector blinked at me in that obvious way of his, to prod me into action. "Thanks for the note, Hector, you go on home," I said. "Is everything ok, boss?" he asked. "No, but I'll take care of it," I responded. Hector nodded. He was still only a kid. I'd been training him for about three months and he didn't look at all uncomfortable in the suit and tie that I'd bought for him. I'd taught Hector to be polite, calm, well mannered and now he could be employed as a bouncer anywhere in the world. I'm sure the customers at the Lima Miraflores Hilton had no idea that Hector lived in a house he had built himself in the pueblos jovenes slums to the east of here, where the walls were corrugated metal sheets, where water came from a stand pipe and sewage ran in the street. Displaced from his shanty, Hector appeared elegant, poised, and aristocratic. The marriage of a conquistador bloodline with Inca royalty. And he was smart and he had compassion. He was an ideal lieutenant. He couldn't be more than twenty-one or twenty-two; he'd go far, probably have my job in five or six years. "It seems a bit early for this kind of nonsense," he said with a resigned shake of the head. He was talking about the contents of the noteMcKinty, Adrian is the author of 'Bloomsday Dead Library Edition', published 2007 under ISBN 9780743499491 and ISBN 0743499492.