Summary
The narrative voice shifts to that of Father Juilliard. He says he is pulling together the different accounts of what happened, and has changed people’s names. He says the importance of changing the names will be obvious at the end of the story. Father Juilliard runs the Mission School at the dumpsite. The building is made of metal shipping containers. Children have to be bribed with food to attend. Raphael and Gardo rarely go to class, but Father Juilliard knows Rat because he stops by for ointment and bandaids and baths and food.
One day Rat brings Raphael and Gardo to the school and asks to use the computer to help Raphael and Gardo take part in a news quiz. Father Juilliard goes off to make sandwiches for the boys while they type up something from a folded piece of paper. Father Juilliard winces at the filth on Rat’s hands as he eats his sandwich. Father Juilliard comments on how he and Sister Olivia both fell in love with Jun when they met him, and had wanted to adopt him, but he never comes to classes like he says he will. The boys eat, thank him, and leave. A few weeks later, Father Juilliard learns they were lying about the quiz. They were researching José Angelico and Gabriel Olondriz, who is serving his twenty-third year at the biggest prison in the city. Rat was also up to something—something Rat will reveal to the reader himself.
Raphael narrates, saying police come that night and search his house. They arrest Raphael and put him in a van. In the commotion, people protest. Raphael is so frightened he feels sick and can’t stop crying. He wets himself on the drive to the station in the city. After he vomits, he is thrown in an interrogation room. He recognizes a mean-looking officer he lied to. Several men interrogate him, telling him to tell them where the bag is. Raphael continues to lie, but admits he found money. A man in a grey suit slaps him off his chair. Raphael then admits he was with Gardo. He lies again, saying the money was in an electrical bill. The suited man grabs his throat and says he is going to kill him. Raphael soils himself again. The men hold Raphael out the window by the ankles and shake him.
Raphael comments on how he didn’t give up the truth even then, in part because he now knew about José Angelico. He says, “Where did I find the strength? I know that it was José Angelico’s strength.” They bring him back inside and threaten to kill him, reminding him that his aunt and cousins depend on him. Raphael refuses to change his story. Eventually, the man in the suit tells Raphael he is a piece of garbage. Raphael waits for the man to hit him again, but the man sighs. Raphael can see he is frightened and tired. The man says to release Raphael, who then runs from the police station. His legs bend like he is drunk, but at least he is free. And unlike poor José Angelico, he is alive.
Raphael runs steadily through the fresh rain, grateful to be alive. He is proud that they let him go because he didn’t give up. He laughs at the idea that he is garbage to them, because the “garbage boy” lied his way out of trouble. He comes across an old man with two little kids—night sweepers. He smokes a bit of a cigarette with the old man, and the little girl gives him some water to splash on his bloody face. Raphael thanks them and starts running again.
Raphael reveals that he and Gardo and Rat discovered through their computer search that José Angelico, presumed owner of the possessions they found, died in a police station while being interrogated. Raphael wonders if it was the same station he just left—maybe even the same room.
After the computer search, the boys rooted through old newspapers at the dump and read about José Angelico, who was arrested for a $6 million robbery. The man he robbed was the vice president. José Angelico had been an orphan, adopted by the son of Gabriel Olondriz, and had worked as the vice-president’s houseboy for eighteen years. He had an eight-year-old daughter and no other family. The six million dollars was waiting somewhere. Raphael takes a break from running and sits in the rain, shaking. He knows they have to deliver the letter to Colva Prison.
A woman named Grace takes over the narrative at Father Juilliard’s request. She says she worked closely with José Angelico because she is a maid to Senator Zapanta, the robbed vice-president. José Angelico was kind, gentle, trustworthy, and honest. He had no vices she knew of, and he paid for his daughter to go to school and to live with a family near the school, as she couldn’t live with him at the vice-president’s. José Angelico’s wife was dead and his son had died young. Grace was upset to learn what had happened. She went to find his daughter right away, but she was told by the family housing her that she was gone. They wouldn’t say where she’d gone. They weren’t helpful. Grace concludes her statement by saying José Angelico was a good man, despite what he did. She won’t forget him.
Analysis
Father Juilliard’s voice enters the narrative as the authority that has compiled the first-person accounts that comprise the book. With the detail that he has obscured people’s real names, Father Juilliard foreshadows the legal trouble the boys will have gotten themselves into by the end of the book. The theme of duplicity arises again as Father Juilliard details how the boys exploited his trust in them to conduct research using the Mission School computer, finding out what they could about José Angelico and Gabriel Olondriz while pretending to be there for a far more trivial reason. Father Juilliard comments on how Behala dumpsite boys are some of the best liars in the world, having grown up in a context where duplicity is a necessary condition for survival.
The major theme of violence abruptly enters the story when the police come to arrest Raphael. Assuming correctly that he lied about what he found, the police treat him with no mercy, throwing him in their van and striking so much terror into the boy that he wets himself. In the interrogation room, Raphael displays almost unbelievable resilience as corrupt cops hit him and dangle him out the window.
Raphael’s courage under pressure proves even more impressive when the reader learns, in an instance of situational irony, that José Angelico was killed during interrogation—perhaps in the same station. Raphael knew what the police could do to him, but he met their violence with resolve inspired by the knowledge of what José Angelico endured. In this way, José Angelico begins to assume his place in the boys’ minds as a Christ-like figure who sacrificed himself for the benefit of the less-powerful.
Despite the terror the police instilled in him, Raphael maintains his resilience as he runs home and laughs at his own ability to outsmart the corrupt authority figures. A lifetime of necessary duplicity has given him an advantage in such a dire situation. Raphael finally reveals what the boys found when searching José Angelico and Gabriel on Father Juilliard’s computer: that José Angelico stole six million dollars from Senator Zapanta. Because Raphael knows how much money is at stake and what the police are willing to do to find it, he resolves to get José Angelico’s letter to Gabriel in prison.
To give a broader perspective on who José Angelico was, Father Juilliard invites a maid who worked alongside José to explain what she knew of him. Despite the amount of money he stole, he always came off as trustworthy to Grace. Her testimony establishes a portrait of a humble, hard-working man who suffered the tragic losses of his wife and son and lived to support his daughter. From this description, Grace raises a question in the reader’s mind: If José Angelico was mild-mannered and accepting of his modest and difficult life, why would he risk everything to steal six million dollars?
