Trash

Gardo doesn’t feel bad about Rat taking the money, and they arrange the handoff with Marco. Gardo imagines that the police will be watching and contemplates the ways they will torture him if they catch him. Before going to the tea-house, he buys nice clothes and sharpens his trash-turning hook and hides it in his jeans, in case he has to fight. He sits across from Marco and verifies that the Bible is Gabriel’s. Marco counts the money. Gardo takes the Bible and stands quickly, surprising Marco. But Marco grabs him and begins shouting, “‘I’ve got him!’” (165). Gardo swings his hook into Marco’s face and escapes into the kitchen. Outside, he hears two gunshots, but they miss him. He runs, finds Rat, passes him the Bible, and escapes over a fence. He makes it to a canal and swims as far as he can to a row of shacks. He realizes he is alone.

Raphael says that he goes in a different direction from Gardo and Rat. The next morning policemen are knocking on their door. He believes that they must have taken their pictures and must now be passing them out, offering a reward for information because “someone gave us away” (168).

Before the police come, the boys find one another again the night that they get the Bible. In their room, Gardo and Raphael try to decipher the Bible code while Rat goes out. Gardo figures out how to use the numbers to find specific letters in the Bible verses. The first sentence they are able to create says “Go to the map ref where we lay look for the brightest child” (173). Rat says he knows what a map ref is, from a class at the Mission School. He says that because José is writing to Pia, they need to think about what she might have thought he meant by “where we lay.”

They open the map. Gardo realizes that Gabriel’s prisoner number—746229—could be plotted on the map as coordinates. The numbers line up on a graveyard. “‘Where we lay’” (174), says Raphael, realizing that it means where they are buried. Now they just have to go the graveyard and figure out what José means by “the brightest light,” another clue from the letter.

Rat notices heavy footsteps on the ladder the next morning. He opens a roof hatch he made in their room. The three of them make it onto the roof. They cross to the next roof and find a dip to hide in. Then a policeman on a ladder puts his head over the edge and sees Rat. He blows a whistle and then reaches for his gun as they run.

Raphael says that they wouldn’t have had a chance without Rat. He has spent so much time running and hiding in his life that he “must have had extra senses” (179). They take a dangerous jump through an opening into a building where many of the street children live. Over 100 of the kids all run out into the street at once, cheering, and the three boys go with them. They slip away and make it to a road. A taxi passes by, and Gardo holds up the money he has left. He tells the taxi to take them to Naravo Cemetery. It is the Day of the Dead, and the driver does not think it’s strange that the boys want to visit a graveyard.

A man named Frederico Gonz says that Father Juilliard has asked him to write a piece of the story. Frederico makes grave memorials, including a marker for José Angelico’s son, who died. José asks him to inscribe the following words: “Pia Dante Angelico: seeds to harvest, my child. It is accomplished” (184). Frederico watches as two men carry a stone coffin and place it inside the boxes used for the poor who die.

Four brief articles from four local newspapers discuss the mounting pressure on Zapanta. Two of them—including a university newspaper—condemn his corruption and are merciless in mocking his hypocrisy. The other two articles are pro-Zapanta and serve as mere press releases restating his innocence and the toll that the constant investigations have taken on him.