by Lou Cameron
Since they were in the tropics instead of Mayfair, however, she was dressed more like a Gibson girl planning to play tennis during La Siesta. He wondered if she knew her bodice wasn’t properly buttoned. When a lady had chest measurements like that, it was probably tough to keep all the buttons from popping open.
He lit the claro without asking permission, since they were old friends indeed, and said, “Just got back from losing a revolution in Nicaragua. Have you ever heard of the Princess Manukai of Konakona?”
“Liar.” Olivia sighed, adding, “You’ve been back in San José for weeks and you’ve never come to see me once!”
He nodded and said, “I was afraid to. I’m involved in some of my usual work, and this time with people who play rough. Last night they robbed the princess of all her cash, passport, and so forth. So, I repeat, have you ever heard of her, Doll?”
Olivia rose and moved over to a bank of filing cabinets, offering him a nice rear view as she asked, “How do you spell that weird name again?”
He spelled “Manukai” and “Konakona” for her, wondering how the hell a dame wearing white linen from the nape of her neck down to her trim ankles could look so naked. It was probably because he remembered. He’d forgotten how yummy the back of her neck looked with her blond hair pinned up like that. She slid open a drawer, rummaged about in it, and said, “You’re in luck, Dick. She has an account with us.”
He said, “I figured she might,” as Olivia resumed her seat, facing him, and spread the financial dossier on the green blotter between them. She asked, “What do you want to know about her? If she’s ever stiffed a shop for a box of candy, it’ll be in here.”
He said, “I already figured her credit would be good. Her old man’s a cannibal king or something. Here’s the problem, Honey. We have to get her down to Puntarenas and, at the moment, she hasn’t got a wooden nickel to work with. Can do?”
The English girl said, “I’ll have to see,” as she began to go over the big Kanaka girl’s credit rating, reading half aloud, “Manukai, Princess. That’s her title, not her first name. Apparently they don’t have more than one name and, yes, she’s the oldest daughter and co-heir of his current majesty, King Kamamamoku of Konakona. Perishing wog probably rules a kingdom no bigger than Hyde Park but, I say, he does have a triple-A credit rating. Missionaries must have taught him to pay his bills, what?”
“The princess said her people were sort of advanced. What about her credit rating?”
Olivia’s voice sounded a little grudging as she replied, “Same thing. Bloody unlimited credit. She could buy a yacht on her signature alone, as fat as we’re concerned. Oh, it says here she graduated from Vassar eighteen months ago. Pity. If all the Vassar girls were laid end to end—”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Captain Gringo finished for her, adding: “You keep forgetting I’m a New Englander. But leaving her choice of mainland schools aside, she’s already got a yacht. So we just need enough to get her a new outfit and get her down to it in Puntarenas. So how’s about it, Doll Box?”
“You just leave my box out of this until I decide whether I’m still cross with you, Dick Walker! As for your precious princess, certainly. All she has to do is come in to sign a bank draft, and we’ll give her all the money she can carry. Sometimes I wish I were royal.”
He chuckled and said, “You’re prettier than the Princess of Wales. Uh, couldn’t you just give me, say, five hundred U.S. in her name, Olivia?”
The English girl frowned at him and said, “Don’t be silly. Do you look like a South Sea Island princess? By the way, what does this perishing princess of yours look like, Dick? I already know I’m better-looking than the Princess of Wales!”
That wasn’t quite true, if the pictures he’d seen of fat Prince Teddy’s beautiful Danish wife hadn’t been retouched at least a little. But he let that pass and just said, “For one thing, Princess Manukai is about six-foot-six and has to weigh at least two hundred. Let’s get back to her financial problems. It’s not like I’m asking for a lot, you know.”
Olivia sighed and said, “Dick, I don’t see why I have to explain all this to a big boy like you, but I’m not supposed to release any of her money to anyone but her, and even she’s supposed to sign for it! So just bring the perishing great wog in, let her make at least an X for me, and I’ll be glad to give you all the money she needs!”
He shook his head and said, “Can’t. You see, at the moment she’s holed up across town without a stitch of clothing or … okay, a kimono and no shoes.”
“You … bastard!” Olivia flared, her voice dripping venom as she added: “I might have known any woman you were involved with would have to be naked! Of all the perishing nerve! To come in here and ask me to give you money, illegally, for another bloody woman!”
“Now don’t get your bowels in an uproar, Doll,” he soothed, going on to explain: “I wasn’t the one who stole her things. Someone tried to assassinate her with a bomb last night, and she lost everything she had in the explosion!”
Olivia calmed down enough to say, “I think I read , something about that in La Prenza this morning. Didn’t make the connection. So, all right, where was she, and where were you, when someone blew all her clothes off?”
He grinned and said, “You’d never believe me.” And she said, grimly, “Try me.” So he said, meeting her narrow gaze with an innocent smile, “I was over at the railroad depot when the assassins snuck in. The reason they didn’t blow her up was that she was in bed with my pal, Gaston, at the time. You remember Gaston, don’t you?”
She laughed incredulously and said, “I certainly do, and you say she’s six-foot-six?”
“What can I tell you? Some guys like a little meat with their potatoes.”
She laughed louder despite herself, and said, “The picture is too funny for words, even though I should be ashamed of myself for picturing anything so wild! But you’re just making the whole thing up, aren’t you? I mean, honestly, Dick, do you expect me to buy little Gaston as a giant Vassar-girl-in-blackface’s lover?”
Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “What do you want, my word as an officer and gentleman?”
She sobered and said, “You’re hardly a gentleman. But I do know you take your word as an officer seriously. So, all right, it’s ridiculous but I believe you. It’s too wild a story for even you to make up.”
“Bueno. Just give me about five hundred, and I’ll sign for it.”
“Oh God, here we go again. How on earth do you intend to sign for anything from International Express, Dick? I don’t know how to tell you this, but as a wanted man with a price on your head, your credit rating really isn’t all that grand.”
He said, “All I need is a pen and a paper to sign, damn it. I told you I knew how to spell ‘Manukai,’ and ‘princess’ starts with a ‘p,’ doesn’t it?”
She gasped. “Jesus Christ, I know I sucked you off that time I got sort of carried away, Dick! But do you seriously expect me to be party to a forgery?”
“Picky picky picky, what’s a little penmanship between old pals? I give you my word—and you know it’s good— that I’m not trying to steal any of your firm’s petty cash.”
“No, you’re trying to get me to steal it for you! I could lose my bloody job! I could even go to prison!”
“How? Who’s going to know? The office is closed. So where are any witnesses to say it was me instead of a shy Island maiden who signed for the dough? You have her signature on file, don’t you?”
“Of course. But it would still be forgery if I let you copy it, Dick!”
“So don’t let me. Just give me the damned form and a copy of her official signature and then go get a drink of water or something. We both know nobody will ever examine it unless someone raises a question about its being genuine, and who’s going to bitch—the princess? She wants the damned money. She can’t go home without it!”
Olivia still hesitated, so he insisted. “No shit, Doll Box, I wouldn’t ask if it was
n’t really important as hell to me.”
She hesitated again, then sighed and said, “Oh damn, you’re going to ruin me, but you know I just never have been able to resist you.”
She reached in a drawer, handed him the proper form and some scrap to practice on, then turned the dossier around to give him a clear view of the big Kanaka girl’s official signature as she rose, saying, “I’m going in for a smoke in the lounge next door. Naturally, if you can get to the princess and back before I finish, oh, a couple of cigarettes, I’ll have no way of knowing anything but the fact you produced a properly made-out draft. So I naturally had to give you the money, right?”
He told her she was a swell kid. She said she was a perishing chump and left him alone with her desk at his entire disposal. He got right to work.
Captain Gringo was hardly a professional forger. But he’d learned military sketching as well as mapmaking at the Point, and the signature was pretty simple. Princess Manukai wrote more like a little girl than a princess might be expected to. He’d suspected the veneer of western culture her folks had bought her was a little thin. He screwed up his first attempt, got it right on the second, and then signed the bond paper pretty well, in all modesty. He saw the rest of the form was blank. Olivia still had to fill in the date, amount, and so forth before she could give him the cash. That would be no problem, with the office deserted for at least another three hours or more. He really didn’t want to get the kid in trouble, and the fact that nobody would ever be able to say whether she’d given the money to him or the Czar Of All The Russias might help keep her out of any.
He knew his way into the lounge. Old Olivia had entertained him during La Siesta before, as he remembered fondly. As he came through the doorway with the papers in hand, he saw she seemed to want to entertain him there again, unless she always smoked bare-ass, reclining on a leather couch.
As she looked up at him languorously, he said, “I guess you don’t want to open the safe right now, huh?”
Olivia opened her creamy white thighs instead as she purred, “Screw the safe for now. Better yet, get over here and screw me right, you bad boy! Mamma wants to make sure you haven’t been bad with other little girls, and there’s only one way to find out. So if you can’t get it up, get out!”
He laughed, not sure he meant it, as he considered all the sacrifices he’d been called on to make lately, just to keep that crazy big Kanaka broad out of more serious trouble.
But, somehow, once he was going at it hot and heavy with the beautiful ash-blonde on the nice firm couch, his labor in Princess Manukai’s behalf seemed worth the effort.
*
It was a dark and foggy dawn when they arrived at the seaport of Puntarenas after an all-night run by private coach. They paid off the shady coachman and shotgun messenger Gaston had recruited from among the rogues of San José and sent them on their way. When Gaston said the discreet posada they’d be checking into was only five blocks away, the princess asked how come. Captain Gringo took her arm and explained, “If anyone ever asks those hombres where they dropped us off, we don’t want them handing out our exact address, see?” He didn’t add that moving cross-country with a giant Kanaka, unobserved, had been enough of a bitch. It wasn’t Manukai’s fault that, even wearing her new Costa Rican campesina costume, with her long hair braided mestiza style, she didn’t make a very convincing second-class citizen of any Central American country he d ever been through. He told her to remember she was a cheap pickup in case they passed anyone on the streets at this hour as Gaston took her other arm and said, “Eh bien, this way, my children. Thank god we don’t have any other baggage to worry about.”
Manukai giggled and asked, “Which one of you sailors am I supposed to be with, or did we settle on group rates?”
Captain Gringo laughed, but asked, “Don’t you ever think of anything but sex, Princess?” And she replied, “Not unless I’m awfully hungry, and now that I’ve fucked both of you, ‘Princess’ sounds a little formal. You boys have my royal permission to just call me ‘Manukai’ or, better yet, ‘Honey Bunch’ or ‘Baby Doll.’ Whose turn is it, by the way? I haven’t been laid since San José, and it’s starting to hurt!”
It was starting to worry Captain Gringo as well. It wasn’t that he was a prude. Manukai didn’t shock him by wanting to screw all the time. He wanted to screw all the time, too. Or at least he did when he wasn’t worried about getting killed. It was the big girl’s simple approach to sating her simple appetites that had him worried.
They’d had a hell of a time keeping her discreetly inside the coach during the night stops they’d had to make. She hadn’t seemed to understand that demanding sex, in English, loudly, even from inside the coach, was not the way one forced Spanish-speaking coachmen and people watering mules late at night to dismiss one as a campesina serving-wench. So was she really fit to mount a top-secret candy store stickup, let alone a risky rescue operation?
He didn’t ask her. A guy could only eat the apple a bite at a time, and the first thing they had to do was get her safely out of sight. Luck was with them as Gaston led the way down dark deserted side streets, up an alley, and through the back door of a posada they’d holed up in before.
Naturally, nobody was expecting them. So the landlady greeted them in her nightgown with a candle in one hand and a pepperbox pistol in the other. Then she saw who at least two of them were and heaved a sigh of relief, saying, “Oh, I thought you were burglars, muchachos. You have no idea how pleased I am to see it was only familiar sex fiends picking the lock of my back door. The usual corner suite of rooms?”
Captain Gringo nodded and got out the dough to work things out as Gaston led Manukai upstairs. He told the landlady, “We’re sort of on a budget, and the local law’s not after us this time, Mamma Rosa. So you just want the going rates for three guests, right?”
“Wrong.” Mamma Rosa grinned, displaying a gold front tooth she was sort, of proud of and adding, “It is most rude for to shit old friends, Ricardo. You wouldn’t have come here if you felt free to enjoy the softer beds and more crowded halls of our finer hotels in Puntarenas. Besides, it is a well-known fact all gringos are muy rico. You pay double as usual, or you take that elephant somewhere else for to fuck, eh?”
He called her a nasty cunt and crossed her palm with silver. She laughed and said, “Bueno. You know the way by now. That is; unless you wish for to come in and have a morning cup of coffee with me, Deek.”
It was not at all tempting. Mamma Rosa was so ugly, a good-looking pig would have been more tempting. But he decided he’d better phrase it more delicately, so he winked down at her and said, “I only wish I had the time. But I have to go out again in a few momentos, querida.”
“Oh? It is not you the big India is with? Madre de Dios, there must be more to our little Gaston than one would imagine! I would think he’d need a plank tied across his ass for to keep from falling in, no?”
“Don’t be bitchy, Mamma Rosa. It’s not her fault her own mamma made her clean the plate every meal when she was still little. I’ve got to go up and have a few last words with Gaston while he’s still got his pants on. It’s been nice talking to you again.”
“Shit.” She pouted. “All you ever wish for to do with me is talk. Do you not find me at all attractive?”
“I find you muy bonito,” he lied, “but you’re already charging us more than we can afford, and I really don’t have time right now.”
“Maybe when you get back?” she suggested wistfully as he turned away to mount the stairs two at a time. When he joined Gaston and Manukai upstairs in the unlit corner suite, the first thing he said was, “I think we’ve got a problem. Mamma Rosa’s got the hots.”
Then he saw what Gaston was doing to Manukai on the brass bedstead • across the room and added, “Damn it, kiddies, you can go in to play after I go out to contact our people here in Puntarenas! Cut it out, Gaston, I want to talk to Manukai, you pervert!”
The naked giantess spread-eagled on the
sagging mattress with Gaston’s head between her big brown thighs said, “Don’t you dare stop now; Frenchie! I can talk and come at the same time, Dick. What’s up? I sure hope it’s your sweet-loving dong. I’m in the mood for a gang-bang!”
He grimaced and said, “I’m sure you are. Okay, we’ll cross our landlady’s bridge when someone has to come in it. I want to check out your private navy, Manukai. How do I go about finding it?”
She lay her head back sensuously, eyes closed, and said, “Oooh, nice! Just go down to the docks and look for a topsail schooner with ‘Orotiki’ lettered on her bows. The skipper’s name is Kuruhai. He speaks English, and he won’t eat you if you tell him I sent you. So … oh … yessssss!”
Captain Gringo waited politely until she’d finished coming and Gaston had mounted her right to take care of his own needs before he asked the now somewhat calmer princess if there wasn’t a more discreet way to contact the schooner, adding, “A foreign vessel tied up at the main docks like a big-ass bird, with a Kanaka crew aboard, is hardly the best-kept secret in Puntarenas by this late date. Didn’t you think to at least run a telephone line ashore?”
“To where, Dick? We noticed people here in Costa Rica sort of noticed us when we sailed in. We’re not that stupid. I told Kuruhai to keep everyone on board and out of sight as much as possible while I whipped up to the capital to recruit some professional help. I knew we needed some if we ever hope to rescue my people the blackbirders are holding on the Guardian Bank.”
Captain Gringo shook his head wearily and said, “That’s for damned sure. Every move you’ve made so far was as good as a hand-delivered challenge to the other side. You’re as bad as the new young Kaiser of Germany when it comes to telegraphing your punches, Doll. So, okay, your schooner has to be under observation; there’s no way any of us can board it without being under observation too, and by now they know what all three of us look like at a distance. Any suggestions, Gaston? Hey Gaston, I’m talking to you, Old Buddy!”
