buildings around the square. When I saw Morresy popping up behind the Municipal building in his suit and tie, I imagined a Neanderthal wearing a business man Halloween costume. The wild and ungovernable Morresy had transformed into an innocent and decent man. I laughed at him so hard and called him hypocrite. “Whatever,” he replied, adding, “Before anything, I need you to please change these Soles to dollars. It is the equivalent of one thousand dollars.” He was in a hurry, having only one hour for his lunch. To save some time he would walk to the KFC located less than two blocks away and get the orders ready. The idea was to get together out there in about twenty minutes. I never could imagine that what was about to happen would look like one of the surrealist movies from the Spanish cineaste, Luis Buñuel. As I walked right in the middle of the downtown Lima, I never thought about the fact that I had a fortune inside my blue jean’s pocket. It was a fortune if anyone considers the hundreds of homeless right in the center of the capital of Peru: There where adults and children living under the bridges, sleeping inside little houses made out of cardboard, their lean bodies wrapped in urine-soaked rags. Morresy instructed me not to choose any of the foreign exchange businesses; “The dollar would be more costly,” he carefully stated. Intead find one of the “Campistas,” individuals who walked the streets with kangaroo bags filled with dollars and calculators in their hands shouting, “You can get a few extra dollars.” In the late eighties, it was a screaming secret that those “campistas” standing all day in the main squares and avenues of Lima were the money-laundering machinery for the drug cartels. Looking for the best price, I was asked by a few “campistas” until I stopped and asked an old man sitting on his portable camping chair. His heavy white eyebrows intensified the color of his black eyes. He was modestly dressed with brown corduroy pants and blue jacket. I was interrupting his reading. As he folded his newspaper, he asked if I really had money to exchange, or if I was just wasting his and my time. I felt offended, so I pulled the cash out of my pocket and said, “Sure, I do… You see it now?”
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