Mancora Assiduously. That’s how the mother with the pixie face and pipe cleaner fingers wipes down the retractable tray and plastic cutlery in front of her toddler. Even on this short flight, her little lass is lost in a video game trance. The mom’s elvish, almond-colored eyes gaze over at…

A Peruvian fun ride — Even as I’m adjusting the driver’s seat of the Yaris, what I’m going to attempt barely seems real. Painfully stupid, yes. Tantalizingly fun, definitely. But not really real. It feels akin to a potentially fatal passage rite of manhood, like spearing a lion or sticking my hand into a dirty…

Algarrobina (Pisco Egg Nog) Ingredients: 2 ounces Pisco 1/2 ounces Algarrobina syrup 1 ounce Evaporated milk 1/2 ounces Simple syrup 1/2 ounces Egg white Ice Ground cinnamon for garnish Preparation: To make the simple syrup, mix 1/2 cup sugar with 3 tablespoons of water. Bring to a slow boil, and…

PROLOGUE The half-naked dwarf waving the butcher’s knife in my face has really got me thinking. He barks like a feral dog, rotted fish breath and saliva spewing out from his red Dancing Devil mask. …

‘Islands in the Stream.’ What kind of sick bastard plays that song? At this hour? Rolling over, I fumble for my phone. Eleven AM? Already? Easing off the hotel bed, my skull feels like an egg cracking. Too much blood throbbing to the temples. Whatever happened, it was rough. …

“What’s with all the flucking?” CLICK. “Fuck! Fuck-edy! Fluck! Fuck! Gus, I’m not going to jail!” I wind up like a gangly carny dunk tank pitcher and heave the phone across the room, knocking over the portrait of the blindfolded lady with no face and a bleak background. “Shit!” It’s…

I twist upright. Charly Garcia’s ‘Botas Locas’, plays on my phone Gushing sweat, I rush in, tripping over the dwarf’s dead body. “Sorry.” Why the hell’d I say that? Oh well. Snatch my ringing phone from Marcello’s table. Check the caller ID. My innards feel like a folded, dirty diaper…

The dwarf’s doll eyes, lifeless yet omnipresent, stare at me, judging like some sort of grand inquisitor from the beyond. Vicious and guilty thoughts swirl as tropical rains pummel from outside. Liquidating does sound like as good a plan as any. Let nature’s brutality and sweet, savage time wash away…

And that’s when the half-naked dwarf in the Dancing Devil mask comes running at me with a big butcher’s knife — I jerk the chair up like a lion tamer just as he stabs with a fierce, downward arc. A grunt and a sick, thwacking blade-on-bone sound. Expecting to see my guts falling out, I glance down. …