by Lou Cameron
He came to a corner and headed down a side street. First he’d put more distance between himself and any attempted tail. Then he’d figure where the hell he was and what he intended to do about it.
He knew where the military presidio was. Before he figured out how he’d ever get Gaston out of there, he had to have a place to take him. So a base of operations was indicated. Captain Gringo came to another corner and turned it automatically. He was in a middle-class residential area that offered nothing but temporary cover. Like most Hispanic homes in this part of the world, the ones around him faced inward on their patio courts and offered little of interest to the narrow street. Captain Gringo walked casually, trying not to be any more interesting than the blank stucco walls and barred gates he passed. The neighborhood was dimly lit with an occasional streetlamp. When he saw a group of youths lounging under one, well down the way ahead, he turned another corner without having to think too hard about it. He passed one or two people in his travels and nodded politely. It was now too dark to see if they nodded back. Things were looking up. If he couldn’t see them any better than that, they couldn’t see him any better.
He was starting to feel safer now, but he knew he couldn’t just roam the streets all night. He had to find a safe hideout before it got late enough for folks to wonder about footsteps outside their private little worlds. He knew that like most Latin American cities, Bogotá was surrounded by shanty town favelas. The one to the north between the main drag and those mine installations he’d blown up the last time he’d been here were out. The young rebels he’d worked with had enough on their plate right now, just trying to stay alive. A big gringo with a price on his head would not only be less welcome than the plague, somebody in the gang might opt for the reward.
He felt his groin tingle wistfully as he wrote off the rebels he knew in town. That one muchacha had served him a sweet enchilada indeed, and a couple of the other girls in the gang had looked interesting, too. But it was dumb enough to be back in town this soon. He couldn’t risk looking up a single soul he knew here!
He swung a corner and found himself on a slightly wider street with some lights ahead down the block. As he passed a girl lounging in a doorway she murmured, “A ’onde va, querido?” in a lackluster voice. So he knew he was drifting back to the action part of town.
That was okay. He’d be less likely to attract attention in the parts of Bogotá a single man was expected to be interested in. Pulling his hat brim down a bit to shade his features, Captain Gringo strolled on, ignoring the casually lewd suggestions from some of the doorways he passed. He knew where he was now. He knew the street ahead. He’d passed through it more than once during his last adventures here.
More important, he hadn’t made any friends or enemies within blocks.
He drifted to a closed shop on the corner and pretended to look at the shoes in the window as he got his bearings. There was a neighborhood cantina across the way. That was to be avoided. Strangers stood out in any local joint and the police in every city expected knock-around guys to show up in places like that.
There was an open farmacia a couple of doors past the cantina. Nobody cared who ducked into a drugstore early in the evening. So he headed that way. The druggist inside was waiting on a woman in a straw hat and shawl. Captain Gringo noticed the politely startled glance of the druggist but ignored it and waited politely until the woman had paid for her purchase and left. Captain Gringo went to the counter and bought a big bottle of quinine. He didn’t need any quinine, but it was reasonably expensive. The druggist got even friendlier when he asked for some Havana Perfectos. As the druggist rang up the sale and made change, he asked, “El Señor is new in this barrio, no?”
Captain Gringo had been hoping for something like that. He smiled pleasantly and said, “Yes, I’m with the German legation, as you may have guessed.”
“Ah? El Señor speaks Spanish very well for a German. Although, now that you mention it, I place the accent. Your consulate is that big pink building over on the avenue, no?”
Captain Gringo wondered what else was new, but he nodded and said, “Yes, I came over this way tonight to talk to some people I know about renting a furnished room. I understand there are a few around here, but the fellow I was supposed to meet wasn’t in the cantina just now. I sure hope I didn’t get the address wrong.”
The druggist brightened and asked, “Ah, you are searching for a room?”
“Yes, I’ve been staying at a hotel near the depot since I was posted here, but it’s costing me the earth, and I’m afraid it’s not a very nice hotel. This Colombian fellow who works with me at the German consulate says he has an aunt around here who lets out rooms, but, like I said, he hasn’t shown up yet. I guess I’ll just have to hang around and hope he does.”
You could see the little wheels spin around in the neighborhood druggist’s eyes as he tried not to look at the expensive purchases on the counter between them. He said, “Well, far be it from me to interfere, señor. But if your friend can’t find you a place for to stay, I have a regular customer who owns a small hotel just down the street. She is a most respected widow who keeps her rooms most clean. I can vouch for the fact she uses a formidable amount of soap. As to her rates, I cannot say. But I do not think her rooms are very expensive.”
Captain Gringo resisted the impulse to nod. He frowned dubiously and said, “Well, I’m certainly tired of waiting around for that other guy, but …” and then all he had to do was relax and let himself be sold. It took the druggist less than fifteen minutes to close shop and almost drag him down the street to the hotel a relative had to be running.
Somebody had once told Captain Gringo that a true bargain was a transaction in which each party thought that he or she was getting the best deal. So the grim little hotel, run by a grim little woman in rusty black, was a better bargain than he’d hoped for. The landlady and the neighborhood wise guy who’d steered him to her doubtless thought he was a live one. He pretended he didn’t know that he was being charged twice as much as the small furnished suite of rooms was worth. On the other hand, the place was reasonably clean and, more important, private. He paid a month in advance for the rooms tucked into a corner on the street side. The widow’s doorway opened on the vestibule downstairs, but a guy could come and go by the stairway unobserved, when her door wasn’t open. He could keep an eye on the street out front from between the slats of the jalousied shutters. There seemed to be a way out the back, too. He’d explore the upstairs hallways later.
Meanwhile, he’d established, should anybody ask, that the corner suite was occupied by a nice boy from the German legation, consulate, or something. They hadn’t asked him what he did for Der Kaiser, once he’d shown them the color of his money they hadn’t appeared to care. He of course had no intention of staying a month, or even a week, if he could help it. But by paying well in advance he’d hopefully lulled her interest in him for a while. Anxious landladies ask questions. Contented ones didn’t, as a rule.
The druggist left discreetly as the black-clad widow puttered about a bit to make sure he was going to stay. He made a point of saying he’d have his luggage delivered in the morning. What would it cost to buy a couple of cheap suitcases?
So, having taken his money and given him his key, she left him to his own devices, too. He grimaced as he shut the door after her and snuffed the candle. He wondered if she’d pay off the druggist in cash or something more personal. He’d noticed the little druggist ogling her in the cracked mirror across the room. Some guys were like that. The poor old broad had a reasonable figure under that rusty black poplin, but the severe bunned-up hair had been streaked with gray and the lips had been as kissable as a steel trap.
Captain Gringo moved to the window in the darkness. As he’d expected, he had a clear view of the street below through the slats. He could see the sign of the farmacia but not as far as the cantina. Nobody down there seemed to be interested in the front entrance of the hotel. Except for an obvious whore in a
doorway down the block, nobody was lounging around looking like they weren’t interested, either.
Captain Gringo struck a match and relit the candlestick. Then he sat on the bed and took out his .38 to check it as he pondered his next move. It was early and he was edgy as hell, but his best move right now would be no move at all.
He’d let them get used to the idea that a “German” was staying in the neighborhood. He’d picked that nationality because he knew few Latins could tell a German from an English accent in Spanish and because the story fit. He’d remembered there was a German legation nearby and, of course, everyone knew Germans were big and blond. Later, when people asked the locals about him, they’d be assured he was “neighborhood.” Meanwhile, he knew he’d never be able to approach the presidio where Gaston was being held this late at night without attracting attention, no matter who they thought he might be. He’d case that part out by daylight, when the streets were crowded and he had this “address” for any nosy cop.
He tossed his hat on a chair, put the gun in a fold of the mattress near the headboard, and started to undress. He didn’t want to go to bed. It was early, he wasn’t the least bit tired. He was edgy as hell, as a matter of fact. He’d eaten aboard the train, but he was starting to get hungry again and he was dying for a drink.
But that was tough shit. All too many guys on the dodge had been taken, just as they thought they were safe, by dropping their guard as soon as the pressure seemed to be off them for the night. Billy the Kid had bought the farm about this same time at night when he’d left a safe hideout for a bedtime snack. Captain Gringo remembered that lawman he’d met during his hitch in Apache country. Mean-looking gent named Pat Something. He’d said he’d have never gunned the Kid if it hadn’t been for the Kid’s uncontrollable appetite, and that some owl-hoots just never learn. The Kid had been caught once already, when he’d succumbed to the smell of frying bacon and eggs. The night he’d died at the Maxwell spread he’d been after a steak. Captain Gringo decided it wouldn’t kill him to sleep on a growling gut.
He finished stripping and turned down the counterpane on the bed. The sheets were cool and scented with lavender. It seemed almost obscene as well as wasteful to slide a solo unwashed body between them. But he did. For some reason it gave him a hard-on.
That was another appetite he hadn’t been able to satisfy lately. It had been a three-day journey from the coast, changing trains a lot and mule packing over some of the rough stretches.
He hadn’t looked for any action, coming up from the lowlands. He’d seen some nice-looking stuff in the last few days. A guy could hardly go anywhere without seeing somebody worth laying, but he hadn’t really considered anything along those lines until just now when, for the first time in days, he found himself alone in bed with nobody likely to point a gun at him in the next few minutes.
He willed himself to forget it. He hadn’t come all this way to find a woman. He was risking his ass to save Gaston, and that was going to be a real problem. Bogotá was full of broads. There was one holding up a wall with her for-sale spine just across the goddamn street! It was time he got down to some serious planning about that goddamn military presidio on the far side of town.
But he’d been thinking about that for days. He hadn’t come up with a sensible plan either. But, as a natural survivor and professional man of action, he’d learned to move on the guns and play it by ear until fate, or a mistake by the other side, offered an opening.
So far this trip, Lady Luck seemed amazingly benign, considering how the old bitch had been treating him since the day he found himself facing a U.S. Army court-martial on a bum rap. He was almost certain nobody had trailed him to this lair, and the neighborhood offered a better base of operations than most. It was too transient for a stranger to draw all the gossip, and too quiet to draw the undivided interest of the law. In the morning, along with some cardboard luggage, he’d pick up a change of clothing. It was cool enough at this altitude to get away with a dark suit and felt hat.
Just in case some rat in Buenaventura had described him to the new government, a gringo was a gringo and they’d be looking for a big guy in a Panama suit.
“Then what?” the small voice asked from somewhere in the worried shadows of his mind. Captain Gringo told it to go to sleep. He knew the dangers as well as the discomforts of planning the unplannable alone in bed with a weary brain and a hard-on. A guy could squirrel-cage all night and never come up with an idea that made much sense in the cold reason of broad daylight. He’d done all he could for now. The rest depended on the measures the enemy had taken. He couldn’t see them from here. Hell, he wasn’t even sure who the enemy was.
The last time he and Gaston had passed through these parts they’d been fighting the government in power for people paying to see it overthrown. Then General Reyes had popped out of the woodwork and started mopping up both loyalists and rebels to “restore order.” To give the devil his due, things seemed orderly as hell right now. Captain Gringo knew many of the erstwhile loyalists and rebels would have made peace with the new junta and, if useful to Reyes, were probably working for him. That was a good reason to avoid seeking help from his old rebel comrades here in Bogotá. If they had not yet changed sides, they were losers having enough trouble just trying to stay alive. The apparently loose security he’d noticed so far hinted that the Reyes government felt pretty smug in their new rug. So, okay; if they were running things so relaxed, why had they picked Gaston up? Like everyone else who’d fought the old government, Gaston had only asked for out!
Gaston and Captain Gringo had split up when the revolution went sour, not to oppose General Reyes but to get the hell out of his way. Gaston had led a party of innocent refugees out to the north while Captain Gringo had finished their contract by blowing up a few loose ends and escaping via another route. If the fucking government now running things had just left them the hell alone they’d have met by now in Buenaventura and been out of the country. They said Reyes was smart. So what was this bullshit about arresting guys who’d never done all that much to him?
The reward? That sounded stupid-greedy. The little Frenchman wasn’t worth that much to the Legion he’d deserted years ago. The two of them together were worth a sum a private citizen might find tempting. But for God’s sake, General Reyes had a whole fucking country to loot at his pleasure if he needed cigarette money. They must have known Gaston had friends. They must have known that grabbing him would be asking for other soldiers of fortune too … That was it.
Gaston was bait. They were holding him to lure a rescue try and … then what? They hadn’t even questioned him at the depot. The handful of military police had waved everyone through with a casual glance at their papers. He probably could have gotten through with a laundry list. They certainly had most definitely not trailed him from the depot and …
Captain Gringo slid out from between the now-warm sheets and over to the window. It was getting really cool now, and the effects on his hard-on were the same as a cold shower while he stood, covered with gooseflesh, peeking out through the slats of his shuttered window.
The whore who’d been standing in that doorway was gone. The street out front was deserted for the moment but somewhere in the night a piano tinkled a lively tune. It was funny what night and a little distance did to the sound of music. He knew that up close, in the smoke-filled cantina, the rinky-tink piano sounded cheerful and rowdy. From here in the lonely darkness it sounded wistful and homesick.
Captain Gringo spotted a moving light in a window across the way and watched with interest as he softly sang along with the distant piano. A woman in a short white shift was moving toward the window carrying a candle. It was too far to make out her looks, but he could see her legs from mid-thigh down and they looked yummy as hell in the soft candle glow. She put the candle down near the open window and started to pull the drapes of a four-poster bed open. She had her nicely shaped derrière to him as she bent to smooth the sheets and fluff the pillows. Captain
Gringo grinned and sang, “Up in a balloon, dear. Up in a balloon. Up among the little stars, beside the silvery moon…”
The girl, woman, whatever, stood up, satisfied, with her back to him. She seemed to be talking to someone in a corner he couldn’t see in to. It had to be a guy. He wondered if she was that puta he’d seen in the doorway before. She started to pull the shift off over her head and as the hemline rose, he found himself singing, “Oh, there’s something very daring, going up in my balloon.”
It didn’t matter what her face looked like. That hourglass of naked female flesh was giving him another hard-on. The customer, lover, whatever, came into view now. He was a heavyset guy in black pants and a white shirt. As Captain Gringo watched, he moved over to put his arms around the naked woman. The tall nude American wondered how much further they’d go with the candle lit. They were too deep in the room to be seen from the street level below, but they had to know that window faced others across the way. If she was a whore and he was the local Romeo, maybe they liked to show off?
Captain Gringo grimaced, feeling a little sheepish about his peeping tommery. He knew it was really stupid to torture himself like this and, what the hell, he wasn’t even close enough for a good peep show. But he went on watching, even as the rest of us would have.
