The Curse of the Lost White City

by James Gray

  “Smells funny to me,” I said.

  Armelle smiled. “But there is some truth to it.”

  At that moment the journalist in me suddenly woke up. I had to get to know this guy Dog Barker at all costs. This could develop into a great idea for Aventura Magazine.

  After my friends left, I lay down on deck and listened to the surf breaking on the beach. I thought about the deal they had made with Señor Zarkin and the Dog. From where I lay, I could see a light on inside the main cabin of Esmeralda. I watched as Barker stepped out on deck and started to pace around, talking to himself. After a few minutes, he went inside, put on some country music, then turned up the volume. It was Marty Robbin’s, and the song was El Paso, classic gunslinger stuff. I have to admit, it was kind of nostalgic.

  My original plans were beginning to have some serious problems. Numada wouldn’t be back in the water for a while, the article I was supposed to write was a long way from completion, and the magazine’s advance I had been fronted was already half spent. For part of the night, I sat on deck staring at Esmeralda thinking about my new writing project, and the more I thought, the better it seemed. I would have to learn everything I could about Dog Barker, Zarkin and their claim to the lost Mayan ruins in La Mosquitia. I could easily skipper their yacht and prepare a series of articles for Aventura without anybody on board ever knowing. Once my new work was published, I would be long gone on my own boat. It sounded almost too good to be true.

  THE INFERNO BAR CAPER

  The next day, it was back to the brutal reality of my own renovation project. I started to strip out part of Numada’s inside cabinetry. It was a depressing job that took the whole day. That evening I bumped into Patrick on one of the small muddy streets near the bridge. He had left Armelle back at the house.

  “She’s pissed off with me and doesn’t want to work on the boat anymore. Worse than that, she won’t let me touch her. Ma vie sexuelle avec Armelle est terminée,” he said gloomily. (My sex life with Armelle is finished.)

  “That doesn’t sound good, Patrick.”

  “It’s the shits. She doesn’t trust me anymore.”

  She was probably right, I thought to myself, but it really wasn’t my business.

  We decided to go to one of the small bars off the main drag of Barrio el Porvenir. After knocking back a few beers, we staggered over to a restaurant, ordered up some fried chicken and joined the locals yelling at a soccer match on TV. But Patrick had more on his mind than chicken and soccer. “Hey, Jacques, it’s Saturday night, why don’t we go downtown to the Inferno Bar? There’ll be lots of hot chicas (young women) there, and they like gringos. They think that we’re all millionaires. Maybe we’ll find some good shit there, too.”

  “What kind of good shit?”

  He bent over from across the table and whispered, “I know a guy who sells the white stuff, la grande dame blanca, you know, cocaine. It’s clean, fresh and just in from Colombia. Are you in?”

  Cocaine meant nothing but trouble to me. I’d seen it up close, and this place was way too small for me to start mixing with coke dealers. “Don’t you think it’s a little dangerous, mon ami? We’re living on a military base in a country that is as twisted as a bed spring.”

  “Don’t worry, Jacques Legris, half the people on the naval base are on something illegal. It’s no big deal. You can always bail out if you think it’s too hot. I have a gut feeling that you’re going to like the Inferno Bar. It’s not like any place you’ve seen. I’m sure of it.”

  We grabbed a taxi and in five minutes were at the front door of the sleaziest bar in town. The red neon sign above the door seemed to say it all. Below, standing guard in a pool of red light, were two friendly guys armed with 9mm submachine guns. They frisked us before they let us in.

  The inside was dark and smelled like crotch. A wall of Mega Bass speakers pounded my ears. I could make out various human forms scattered around in the shadows. Bathed by the blue light of a follow spot, a stripper was gyrating around a brass phallus. Her greased-up body spun nearly out of control until she sank onto a shaggy fake polar bear rug on the plywood stage. We moved in closer for a better look. In the thick smoke, I could see several dozen gawking sailors, and as my eyes got used to the dim light, I could make out more G-stringed women working the floor. Stationed at each end of the room stood a guy with a sawed-off shotgun. Behind the bar was a sweaty bartender with a handgun stuck in his belt. If this wasn’t hell, it was right next door.

  “How do you like it?”

  “How do I like what?”

  “The Inferno.”

  “Hot,” I said. But I really felt like heading for the door. The place reeked of trouble.

  We were shown to a table. Immediately, two girls came over and asked us to buy them drinks. The waitress was right behind them. Patrick ordered a pitcher of beer. Suddenly, my chair was tipped back and I was looking up at a pair of gargantuan, coffee-colored breasts. Their owner slowly tilted me all the way down onto the floor.

  “An Inferno attack!” screamed Patrick.

  The woman laughed, helped me up, then righted my chair. “That was …” was all I could say.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet, my friend. The Inferno is out of this world!” He handed the girl a few bucks and she moved on. “Hey, Jacques, see that guy over there beside the bar? He’s the one who sells le coco (cocaine).”

  “Go for it, we’ve come this far.”

  Patrick got up and went over to the man. They exchanged hands signs and headed for the men’s room.

  While he was gone, another woman wearing a skin-tight black dress sat down beside me, unzipped my fly and started to rub my cock. “Mmmm, Mister. ¿Tu me gustas.” (I like your style.) She smelled like cheap hotel soap and mouthwash. I couldn’t help wondering how many guys she’d done so far that evening.

  “No, not tonight, mi amore (my love).”

  She tried to keep on but I pulled her hand away.

  Meanwhile Patrick arrived back at the table, and flashed a grin as soon as he caught on what the girl was up to.

  “Hey, who’s the breeze?”

  “I don’t know, just looking for business I guess.”

  “Well, are you going to give it to her?”

  “No way. I’ve got other plans.” The woman got up and disappeared into the crowd. After an hour, the freak show was beginning to get kind of boring. “Hey, Pat, how long do you want to stick around?”

  “The place starts to liven up around midnight.”

  Suddenly some loud shouting came from the other end of the bar. There were too many people in the way to see anything, but I heard glass breaking and a woman with a high voice yelling at a man to stop it. All of a sudden, the crowd parted for a group of bouncers who ejected an unidentifiable number of men from the building. The door closed. The bouncers disappeared. The crowd returned to its original shape as if nothing had even happened.

  “See, Jacques, there’s no fooling around here. It’s probably as safe as any bar from where you come from. Come on, I’ll treat you to a line of some of the best powder on the Spanish Main.”

  “Sure, let’s do it,” I said. We locked ourselves into one of the stinking bathroom stalls. Pat pulled a baggie out of his pocket.

  “Santé,” he said.

  I took a snort. The stuff almost knocked me flying. “Jesus Christ, that’s strong.”

  “Not like the shit we get at home. Here, have another toot.”

  I filled up the other nostril and my eyes started to water. Patrick followed suit. Then we wiped off our noses and left the washroom feeling no pain.

  “Hey, wasn’t that like a kick in the head? Maybe now you’ll want to stick around.”

  I didn’t. We were the only guys in the place who were not merchant marines. I was starting to feel like the whole bar was watching us. “No. Let’s get out of here while we can.”

  Pat shook his head, grinned and pointed to one of the girls.

  “I’ve got plans. That little mama o
ver there in the black dress is pretty hot.” I thought about Patrick’s girlfriend. If she only knew, but maybe she did.

  “Yeah, looks like she’s got your number. But I’m hitting the road. Good luck. Thanks for the blow.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever see Patrick again. Out on the street, there were no taxis in sight, but the air was good and the streets were full of people, so I walked.

  Though it was midnight, people were still out enjoying the night air. I passed a pool hall with its garish green florescent lights and the sound of pool balls knocking together, a sure sign of intense action around the table. Pausing briefly, I watched the game of pool through the open window. In a hole-in-the-wall snack bar next door, a few families sat on white plastic chairs and watched a movie on TV. I was tempted to go in for a midnight snack, but it would have been like entering a private house. A large pig tethered to a pole was eating from a pile of garbage. Across the street, there was another bar — the music from this one was lonely and romantic.

  A few minutes later as I was walking through the guardhouse gate at the naval base, a woman walking toward me brushed up against me and said, “Hola” in a soft voice. Her fragrance was sensuous.

  My mind flashed back to Alicia, the woman I had known in Cuba. It had been so absolutely good that sweet souvenirs still lingered in the back of my mind. She was all a man could ever want, and she had an appetite for sex that would leave me gasping for breath. She had saved my life that night in the bar when she had whispered those few words in my ear about the Russian mafia. So far, I hadn’t come across that sort of loyalty or tenderness in Puerto Cortés.

  As I made my way into the boatyard, an unseen voice from above bellowed, “Hey, that you, Frenchman?” It was Barker.

  “Yeah, it’s me alright.”

  “Well then, come on up for a drink!”

  I climbed the long aluminum ladder to topside and came face to face with the man that everybody in the boatyard loved to hate. He was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts.

  “I just screwed a new whore. Was that ever fun! You must have seen her; she just left.”

  The image of the woman at the entrance popped into my head. It must have been her. “Yeah, we crossed paths at the entrance gate.”

  “Not bad, eh? Have a drink. There’s plenty.”

  “Why not?”

  “Right this way, the bar’s in the main cabin.”

  I followed him inside the wheelhouse, down a series of mahogany steps, and into a sumptuous main salon. The room was cold and smelled of stale cigar smoke.

  “Sorry for the mess, but it’s always like this.”

  The main cabin had large windows. In the galley, there was a stainless steel stand-up refrigerator, a freezer, an electric stove and a dishwasher. With a drink in one hand, he led the way into the front section.

  “There used to be four other guest cabins here, but we took them out to make room for the new cargo hold.” The vast empty space was lined with panels of marine plywood. There was a wide, recently built cargo hatch above us. This was the famous cargo hold that Ronnie Rackman had talked about.

  “We’re slowly turning this thing into a mini-coastal freighter. But Rackman and his guys work so slow, sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be out of here.”

  “What kind of freight are you going to be trans—?”

  “—all kinds of stuff.” The Dog led me to the master’s quarters. “Look at this, it’s my own little playing field.” The king-size bed hadn’t been made in at least a week. “Now let me show you the engine room.”

  We went down a few stairs into another cabin, where a washer and dryer combo sat covered with a pile of dirty clothes. “This is where we keep the tools. But here, this way …” He led me into the engine room. There were two big yellow Caterpillar diesels. For an instant I thought about my friend the Chief. He really hated Caterpillar diesels. “They are a curse,” he used to say. But Barker didn’t seem to mind.

  “We cruise at twelve knots. And the two generators over there are big enough to run a goddamn shoe factory. I got everything double on board, backups to backups. Nothing goes wrong on this ship that can’t be repaired.”

  The engine room was dirty and smelled of lube oil. There was a pile of mover’s blankets in one corner, some caked with mud. Nearby, there was a heap of dirty rags.

  “Don’t worry about the mess, once the new cargo bin is completed, this area will be as clean as a Dutch whore.”

  I followed the Dog back to the main salon.

  “And I have more guns than the Honduran Navy — all of them licensed and loaded. The poor bastard who tries anything funny with me is in for a surprise. Oh shit, I forgot, what are ya drinkin’, Frenchman?” Dog opened the bar and took out two crystal glasses.

  “Got any scotch?”

  “Will this stuff do?” I was surprised. Lagavulin was one of the best, and hard to find in most big cities, let alone in Honduras. He poured a generous shot and slid the glass in my direction. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  Barker swallowed a double shot, poured himself another one, and landed in an overstuffed chair. He began to talk in a phony Southern drawl. “I’ve been here for ten years, moved down from Alberta. I used to work as a bush pilot and a gold prospector. But now you can’t do a goddamn thing without running into some kind of inspector, tree hugger or tax collector. So I moved down here and started my own business. To hell with them — shit!” He’d spilled his drink on his shorts. “Since I’ve been here, it’s been good. I’ve staked three mining claims for gold, and there’s lots of it.” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Made some good money too, and you can be sure it’s all tax-free. Ha! Screw them bastards. I’ll never, never pay taxes again to those money-sucking vampires. Down here in Honduras, I’m a free man. Hey, by the way, want to invest in an opal mine? I got one. Look.”

  The Dog stood up unsteadily and grabbed a big pickle jar that was wedged on a small shelf among the liquor bottles. He unscrewed the lid, which was covered with dust. About twenty small greenish-blue stones rolled out onto the table. “Just this here will be worth about ten grand when it’s all polished up. Zarkin and I are working on a project together. This is his boat, you know. I’m just fixing it.”

  “What kind of a project? Tell me more.” I wanted him to put it in his own words.

  “Archaeology. You know anything about archaeology?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, we have a dig planned in La Mosquitia.”

  “That’s a pretty remote place,” I said.

  “It sure is. I’ve been all through that area, prospecting for gold.”

  “There’s gold down there?”

  “There’s gold, there’s oil, and there are large sites of Mayan ruins.”

  “You’ve seen some?”

  “Man, have I ever. Hey, do you smoke? I got some Cohibas in that box over there, compliments of my boss, Señor Zarkin.”

  I went over to the cabinet and chose a cigar out of the box. Barker struck a match and fired it up for me. He was close, and as I puffed to get the thin going, his face, which was lit by the match that he was holding, seemed to change. It was as if he was somewhere else.

  “Yep, I’ve seen lots of ruins but nothing like these ones. It’s a city, a forgotten city, an enormous find, and waiting for takers.”

  “What about the government? There must be some kind of law protecting a place like that.”

  “No way, my friend. In La Mosquitia, the rules are a little different; you just go in and help yourself.”

  OUT OF THE FRYING PAN

  At least the bottle of Aspirin was in its proper place. As for my aching head, that was a different story. It was afflicted with flashes of the previous night: eating at the greasy spoon with Patrick, the Inferno Bar caper, the sweet-smelling woman at the guardhouse gate, and late night session with my neighbor, the Dog. As the night sky faded away into morning, I lay on the bunk listening to the low moaning coming from the rigging. The sound was
different when it blew out at sea, signifying that the wind was pushing me on to some new destination. With the boat stuck in dry dock, it just implied I was going nowhere fast.

  I arose reluctantly, though I could have stayed in my bunk for a few more hours. Numada’s interior resembled a war zone. The chart table was covered with tools and torn, oily rags. In place of a floor, two narrow planks partially covered a big hole; at the bottom was an empty cavern, the place where the engine sat. In the head, instead of a functioning toilet, there was a plastic bucket. My new reality started to sink in. I had become a victim of my own folly. I took a long swig of water from a plastic bottle and looked through the companionway. Strong gusts of wind were coming in straight off the bay and dark foaming waves were breaking over the wall just behind Numada, sending spray high into the air. Just another day in paradise.

  On the street outside the naval base, a few locals were busy preparing their street stands for business. A dilapidated dump truck thundered through a large puddle, sending a shower of brown water all over the sidewalk. The sea had been rough during the last few days and there was not much to be had at the fish market. Some tired-looking fishermen worked without talking, unloading crates of freshly caught fish. A little further along, I stopped and watched as two men standing in a cayuka heaved a five-foot-long shark onto the dock. The big fish landed at my feet with a thud, still twitching.

  It started to rain, so I sought shelter under the tin roof of the cantina and asked the woman behind the counter for two eggs, black beans and coffee — the standard local antidote for a hangover. I sat staring at the shark lying alone and forgotten on the dock, its power and beauty slowly draining away thanks to a bad move it had made out at the reef. The rain pounded harder and time stood still. Then the woman shuffled over with my food and a bottle of hot sauce.