Crystal Quest, dressed in one of her signature pantsuits with wide lapels and a dress shirt with frills down the chest, scraped back her chair and stood up. Taking their cue from her, the wallahs from the DDO jumped to their feet. “Get it into your head that Triple Border isn’t the Club Med,” Quest reminded Lincoln. “The group we know least about—the group which interests us the most—is this al-Qa’ida entity. Bring home the bacon on the Saudi and al-Qa’ida, Lincoln, and I’ll personally see to it you get one of the Company’s jockstrap medals.” She added with a leer: “Pin it on you myself.” The DDO contingent all laughed. As Quest headed for the door, Kiick offered his hand across the table and Lincoln, half rising from his chair, shook it. “Our cutout will make herself known to you by saying something about Giovanni da Varrazano and the bridge named after him.” Kiick added, “Holy mackerel, watch your ass when you get to Triple Border. You’ll be rubbing shoulders with mighty ornery folks.”
Crystal Quest’s voice, suffused with satisfaction at her own morbid sense of humor, came drifting back over her shoulder: “Whatever you do, Lincoln, stay away from swimming pools.”
Hanging out with Leroy Streeter in a booth at the rear of the Kit Kat Klub on the main drag of Foz do Iguaçú for the second night running, polishing off the last of the sirloin steak and French fries, washing it down with cheap Scotch in a shot glass and lukewarm beer chasers drunk straight from the bottle, Lincoln watched the hookers slotting coins into the jukebox and swaying in each other’s arms to the strains of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which, judging from the fact that it was played over and over, night after night, was either number one on the Brazilian hit parade or the only 45-rpm record in the machine still functioning. Leroy had just come down the narrow stairs leading to a dark hallway with two bedrooms off of it, having gotten his ashes hauled (as he put it) for the second time that night. The skinny teenage girl with the red-dyed hair worked into a chignon on the top of her head to add height and age came down behind him, ironing the folds of a thin shift with her palms as she tottered back to the bar on spiked high heels. “I prefer jailbait,” Leroy informed his new found friend as he signalled for another bottle of beer. “They got theirselves tight snatches and do whichever you tell ’em to without raising a fuss or renegotiating the price. Can’t figure what you got ’gainst getting laid, Lincoln. Like I told you, the girls here is all clean as whistles.”
“They’re only clean as the last whistle they blew,” Lincoln said. “Last thing I need to come down with is gonorrhea. Wind up costing me two hundred fifty grand to get screwed.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Leroy said. He looked over at the dancers padding around on the broad pine planks of the floor in front of the jukebox; one young man, whom Leroy had identified as a Pakistani he’d seen at Daoud’s boondock training camp, was hugging Leroy’s skinny friend with the red-dyed hair and dancing in place, shifting his weight from foot to foot in time to the music. “I don’t hold with females dancing with females,” the Texan told Lincoln, aiming his chin in the direction of the hookers who hung limply in each other’s arms, their backs slightly arched, their painted lids closed, their heads falling off to one side as if their necks weren’t strong enough to support the weight of their elaborate hairdos. “It ain’t normal, is my view, in the sense that lesbian love ain’t normal. If God meant women to fuck women he would have given some of them dicks. The hell kind of music is that anyway? Don’t worry, be happy is how I aim to pass the rest of my days on earth once all this is over with.”
Lincoln decided the moment had come to see whether his efforts at bonding with the Texan had paid off. Bending over the table, lowering his voice so the two Brazilians in the next booth couldn’t make out what he was saying, he asked, “Once all what is over with? It’s got to do with the ammonium nitrate, right? Tell me something, Leroy—what the fuck would anyone do with a moving van stuffed with ammonium nitrate?” He managed to ask the question very casually, as if he were only trying to hold up his end of the conversation; as if he couldn’t care less about the answer.
Leroy, a little man who wanted people to think of him as big, couldn’t resist bragging. “Between you and me and the fly on the wall over there, I’m gonna go and personally drive it through the Holland Tunnel,” he replied, leaning forward until their foreheads were almost touching. “Gonna set the fuse and blow it up in downtown Manhattan and flatten a square mile of Wall Street real estate, is what I’m gonna do with it.”
Sinking back, Lincoln whistled through his teeth. “You guys aren’t fucking around—you’re going straight for the jugular.”
“Fucking A we’re not fucking around,” Leroy said, squirming gleefully on his banquette.
Lincoln raised the bottle to his lips and swallowed a mouthful of warm beer. “What you got against Wall Street, Leroy? Did you lose money on the stock market?”
Leroy sniffed at the air in the Kit Kat Klub, which reeked of beer and marijuana and perspiration. “I hate the Federal gov’ment,” he confided, “and that there Wall Street is a branch of the Federal gov’ment. Wall Street is where them Jews hang out, running the country from behind their polished mahogany desks, plotting to take over the whole entire world. Whether you admit it or not, you know I’m right or you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. You’re a foot soldier like me in the war of liberation. Hell, we may have to destroy America to liberate her, but one way or another we are gonna go and set the clock back to where right thinking folks can get on with their lives without being dictated to by some pompous asshole in Washington. It’s the Civil War all over again, Lincoln. The Federal gov’ment’s trying to tell us what we can do and what we can’t do. Things keep up the way they been going, hell, they’re gonna throw away the Constitution and decide you need to get yourself a license before you can own a handgun.” Leroy kept his voice pitched low but he was starting to rant now. “A license to buy a handgun! Over my dead body! Listen up, Lincoln, you got yourself book learning so you know the country is going to the dogs. Give the kikes an’ niggers an inch, they’ll come right back at you for a country mile. If we don’t draw the limit line in the dirt, if we don’t make our stand now, why, one day soon they’re gonna bus the niggers to every goddamn school in the country until there won’t be such a thing as a white man’s school left between the Pacific and the Atlantic.”
Leroy seemed to run out of steam just as the mulatto girl working the bar turned up with his beer. She deftly flicked off the cap with a church key hanging between her breasts at the end of a long gold necklace. “Ready for a refill?” she asked Lincoln.
The bottle of beer on the table in front of him was still half full. “I’m okay,” he said.
“He is definitely okay,” Leroy agreed impatiently.
The waitress told Leroy, “My girlfriend Paura, she’s the dark haired one in toreador pants dancing all by herself over there, has taken a shine to your friend here.”
“You don’t say,” Leroy said. He smirked across the table at Lincoln. “Why don’t you invite Paura over for a beer, Lincoln. If’n you don’t fancy her I’ll take her on.”
“I told you—” Lincoln started to say, but Leroy had already grabbed the waitress’s wrist. “Go and tell this Paura chic to get her ass over here.”
The waitress could be seen laughing and saying something to her friend as she headed back to the bar. Paura, holding an enormous joint between two fingers of her left hand, slowly turned her head and sized up the two men in the booth, then went on with her dancing though each shuffling step brought her closer to the rear of the bar. She kept dancing even after the record stopped and wound up swaying like a leaf in a faint breeze next to the booth as “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” started in again. She took a drag on her joint and swallowed the smoke and said, “I bet she told you my name’s Paura.”
“She did,” Leroy affirmed.
“She never gets it right.” The girl spoke English with what Lincoln took to be an Italian accent. “I’m Paura som
e days. On others I’m Lucia. Today is a Lucia day.”
Lincoln, an aficionado of legends as well as firearms, asked, “Are these different names for the same person or two distinct people?”
Lucia scrutinized Lincoln to see if he was mocking her. When she saw he was serious, she answered his question seriously. “They’re as distinct as night and day. Lucia is day. Her name in Italian means light. Sunshine and daylight fill her heart, she is grateful to be alive and lives from day to day, she doesn’t see past tomorrow. She goes down on anyone who pays without haggling, she considers it a matter of principle to give a client his money’s worth. She passes on half of what she earns to her pimp and does not hold back his share if a client should happen to leave a tip.”
“And Paura? What’s she like?”
“Paura is night. Her name means fear in Italian. Everything about her can be traced to fear—she is afraid of her shadow during the day, afraid of the darkness when the last light has been drained from the day, afraid of the customers who remove their belts before they take off their trousers. She’s afraid of swimming pools. She is afraid life on earth will end before dawn tomorrow, afraid it will go on forever.” She regarded Lincoln with her frightened eyes. “Would you like me to read your palm? I can tell you on what day of the week your life will come to an end.”
Lincoln politely declined. “I have no visible lifeline,” he said.
The girl tried another tack. “What sign were you born under?”
Lincoln shook his head. “I’m a Zodiac atheist. Don’t know my sign, don’t want to know.”
“That more or less narrows our relationship down to dancing,” Lucia said, her body starting to sway to the music again. Shrugging the filmy blouse so far off one shoulder that the aureole on a breast came into view, she held out a hand.
“She’s a nut case,” Leroy muttered. “But she sure has got the hots for you.”
“I have a bad leg,” Lincoln informed the girl.
“Go ‘head and put her out of her misery,” Leroy urged. “Jesus Christ, you can’t catch nothing jus’ dancing with her.” When Lincoln still hung back, Leroy nudged his ankle under the table. “You ain’t being a gentleman, Lincoln, that’s for goddamned sure.”
Lincoln pulled a face and shrugged and slid off the banquette to his feet. The Italian girl gripped one of his large hands in hers and pulled him limping into the middle of the room, then turned and, stomping out her joint on the floor boards, melted against him, both of her bare arms flung around his neck, her teeth nibbling on the lobe of his ear.
In the booth, Leroy slapped the table in delight.
Lincoln was a good dancer. Favoring his game leg, and with the girl glued to his lanky frame, he launched into an awkward little three step that set the other girls around the bar to watching in admiration.
After a bit Lucia whispered in Lincoln’s ear. “You don’t need to tell me your names if you don’t want to. Wouldn’t change anything if you did—around here nobody uses real names.”
“Name’s Lincoln.”
“That a first name or family name?”
“First.”
“That your name during daylight or at night?”
Lincoln had to smile. “Both.”
Without missing a beat, Lucia said, “Giovanni da Varrazano, who gave his daylight name to the bridge that connects Brooklyn to an island named Staten, was killed by Indians during an expedition to Brazil in 1528. A little bird whispering in my ear told me you would be thrilled to know that.”
Lincoln stopped in his tracks and pushed her off to arm’s length. The smile sat like a mask on his face. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
Lucia, quite pleased with herself, tucked her breast into her blouse with a dip and toss of her shoulder and sank back into his arms, and they started dancing again. Lincoln, suddenly edgy, pressed his mouth to her ear. “So it’s you, the cutout,” he said. He thought of Djamillah in the room over the bar in Beirut, with the faded night moth tattooed under her right breast; he remembered telling her I am addicted to fear—I require a daily fix. You had to be addicted to fear to get into the business of spying; this is the thing he had in common with the Italian girl Paura—she had surely been the cutout who had seen the FBI asset thrown to the crocodile. Lincoln identified the source of his edginess: He hoped against hope she wouldn’t suffer the same fate. “Do you have a good memory?” he asked her now. Without waiting for a reply, he said, “Here goes nothing: I was picked up by the Texan sitting at the table with me, I believe his name really is Leroy Streeter because he mentioned that his father had burned down a Negro church in Alabama. He took me to a room over a bar in Ciudad del Este. The Egyptian named Daoud was there.”
“It’s no skin off my nose if you don’t want sex,” Lucia said. “I’ve had enough sex for one day. My pussy and my mouth are both sore.”
“Daoud checked out my bona fides—I heard him go upstairs and make a phone call—my guess is he was getting his people to confirm that I’d been treated in a Trieste clinic, that I’d written the book I said I wrote. I must have passed the initial muster because he sent me back here and told me to hang out with Leroy until I was contacted again, which is what I’m doing now.”
“The reason we play the same record all the time,” Lucia whispered, her tongue flicking inside his ear, “is because ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ is the opposite of our lives down here. Except for Lucia, all we do is worry about not being happy.”
“With any luck, the next step is for me to be taken to meet the Saudi.”
“The girls who work here,” Lucia said, “use abortions as birth control. If you ever come back again, it will be appreciated if you would bring us a carton of condoms.”
“Leroy told me why they’re shopping around for ammonium nitrate,” Lincoln went on. “I don’t know if he’s bragging or inventing, but he says he plans to fill a moving van with explosives and blow it up in the middle of Wall Street.” He let one of his palms slip down to her tight toreador pants and the swell of a buttock. “What will you do when all this is over?”
Lucia dropped one of her hands to reach under the back of Lincoln’s shirt. “All this will never be over,” she breathed.
Her answer startled Lincoln; that was what the Alawite prostitute Djamillah had told Dante Pippen as he was leaving the room over the bar in Beirut a legend ago. “It will end one day,” Lincoln promised her. “Where will you go? What will you do?”
“I would go back to Tuscany,” she said, clinging to him, burrowing into his neck so that her words were muffled. “I would buy a small farm and breed baby polyesters and shear them twice a year and sell the hair to make silk-soft cloth.”
“Polyester is a synthetic fabric,” Lincoln said.
Lucia’s hand came in contact with the leather of the holster nestling in the cavity in Lincoln’s lower back. She caressed the cold metal on the butt of the small-caliber automatic in the holster. “I will raise baby acrylics, then,” she said, annoyed at his nitpicking. Her fingers worked their way under the holster; when they reached the smooth scar of the healed wound she stopped dancing abruptly. “What gave you that?” she asked.
But Lincoln only murmured her night name, Paura, and she didn’t repeat the question.
Hanging out at the Kit Kat Klub the following night, Lincoln made a point of dancing with two other girls and taking the second one up to a room so that suspicion wouldn’t fall on Paura if he was compromised. Once in the room, the girl, a bleached blonde who called herself Monroe Marilyn, named her price. Lincoln counted out the bills and set them on the table. Monroe washed in a chipped bidet and insisted he wash too, and watched him to make sure he did. She took off the rest of her clothing except for a black lace brassiere, which she claimed to have bought in Paris, and stretched out on the mattress covered with a stained sheet, her legs apart, her eyes fixed on the filaments in the electric bulb dangling from the ceiling. In the bar below “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” started to play again on the jukebox.
Lincoln shut his eyes and imagined he was making love to Paura. Under him, Marilyn moaned and cried out with pleasure; to Lincoln her sensual clatter came across as a recorded announcement, played over and over like the 45-rpm disk on the jukebox downstairs. He finished before “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” did.
“So you got your ashes hauled after all,” Leroy said when Lincoln came limping back to the booth and slid onto the banquette across from him. “You must of broken some kind of speed record. You need to get laid at least once a day not to be sex starved. The trick is to make it last as long as you can. That way you get more fuck for your buck.”
“You ought to write a lonely hearts column for the newspapers,” Lincoln said. “You could advise men how to solve their sexual problems.”
“I just may do that when I’m too old to take on the Federal gov’ment in Washington.”
“How old will you be when you’re too old for the good fight?”
“Thirty, maybe. Maybe thirty.”
Around eleven, an old man wearing a long shabby overcoat and a threadbare scarf wound loosely around his thin neck came into the bar to sell lottery tickets. He had turned up the same hour every night since Lincoln had been hanging out at the Kit Kat. As he stepped through the door, the hookers dropped what they were doing to crowd around him, hunting for lucky numbers on the lottery slips attached to his clipboard. When they’d each bought a ticket that suited them, the girls drifted back to the tables or took up where they’d left off on the dance floor. The lottery vendor shuffled across the floor to a vacant booth not far from where Lincoln and Leroy were sitting. The mulatto waitress filled a tall glass with tap water and set it down in front of him. The old man half bowed to her from a sitting position—the gesture seemed to come from another world and another century. A new girl Lincoln had not seen before came down the steps behind a corpulent Lebanese client and, noticing the old man with the clipboard in the booth, hurried over to buy a ticket. When the music went silent, Lincoln could hear their voices—he could even make out what they were saying. The girl was asking when the drawing would be held and how she would know if she’d won anything. The old man told her that he kept the stubs attached to his clipboard for months. Each morning he tore the list of winning numbers from the newspaper, he said, and made it his business to personally seek out winners who had bought a ticket from him.
Legends Page 23
