Wet Work

by Christopher Buckley

  Charley laughed, the senator's entourage laughed, everyone laughed. Charley said, "My yacht is your yacht."

  "I accept!" Everyone laughed.

  Felix introduced himself to the photographer, a woman. "Do you work for the senator?" he said.

  "No no. Just sometimes. I'm free-lance."

  "Press?"

  "Sure."

  "Are your pictures for the senator, then?"

  "Yes."

  "You see, Mr. Becker's a very private man. Just between you and me, he's a little worried about kidnappers."

  "Ah."

  "You'll only give these photos to the senator for his private use, then?"

  "Yes, certainly."

  Felix grinned. On those occasions when Felix smiled, light came into him.

  The senator introduced the provincial governor, the mayor, the commander of the military district of Loreto, the commissioner of customs, to whom Charley expressed special gratitude for his assistance with the formalities.

  "Well," said Charley, "would you like to have a tour?"

  What a question!

  He took them first to his Rogue's Gallery, a bulkhead aft of the forward lounge on which he'd hung pictures of himself with assorted nabobs and panjandrums.

  "There's Kissinger. This one was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Carter."

  "Human rights," said the senator.

  "Right. There's Haig, you remember him. Here's the Emperor of Japan. He was a prince then. With a camera, wouldn't you know. That's the papal nuncio, he's a cardinal now. Prime Minister of Jamaica. This fellow here, now, he got himself beheaded by his chief of staff just a couple of months after this was taken. Terrible thing. Good man, too."

  The senator said, "A lesson for us all," occasioning some mirthless laughter.

  Charley took them to the bridge and showed them Esmeralda's sophisticated navigational system, especially the look-down, shoot-down radar mounted on the bow to detect the huge, hull-piercing logs and tree trunks that barreled down the Amazon's current at torpedo speeds.

  On their way back to the main salon, Charley pointed out the table that had once belonged to Queen Victoria. "But that isn't the reason I bought it," he said. "I am reliably informed that Tallulah Bankhead once made love on top of that table."

  He showed them the Art Deco gold-glass panels from the old Normandie, the brooding Vlaminck seascape, the gay Dufy water-color of the Cote d'Azur, Cocteau's sensuous sailor, John Steuart Curry's ancient graybeard mariner battling the furious storm alone on a sinking, wave-swept deck, the gentle Bierstadt coastal scene, various postrealist Mihanovics, Jean-Louis Bilweis' risible trompe 1'oeils of scuba divers and mermaids, Montague Dawson's tear-jerking painting of a Victory ship being machine-gunned by a U-boat as the crew jump over the rails into the flaming water, Manet's "Absinthe Drinker" mounted playfully over the bar.

  "There's an interesting story behind that," said Charley, tending bar himself, as was his wont. "Manet painted a version of that painting and they damn near ran him out of town for it. You didn't paint drunks back in the 1850s. Just wasn't done. One of his buddies was Baudelaire. Baudelaire didn't much like it either, though he drank a lot of absinthe, I mean Baudelaire drank. And took drugs. And had syphilis. He had a terrible end but Manet stuck by him. After he died, Manet did another version of the same painting, with Baudelaire's face instead of the rag-and-bone man who was the model for the first. Scotch for you, sir, another scotch for you, Mr. Mayor, scotch for the governor, and that was a scotch and Coke for you, sir? Coming up. I had absinthe once. It's illegal, but they do a little bootlegging in a town in Switzerland near the French border. Can you imagine the Swiss doing anything illegal? Here you go, sir, Dewar's and Coca-Cola. Salud."

  They drank for a while on the fantail salon and then dinner was announced. On their way to the dining room they noticed the Stele, and they all stopped. It had that effect on you.

  "Magnificent," said the senator.

  "Ain't it just?" said Charley. An art magazine had once said that Charles Becker could manage to make Michelangelo's "Pietà" sound like a '57 Chevy.

  "Stele" stood about six feet tall, an upright slab of poured ferroconcrete interlaced with thousands of strands of fiber optics, so that its dull, rough-hewn surface was speckled with dots of astral intensity. It was named for the monoliths the ancients used to erect to their fallen warriors, or to make a holy place, or in some cases, probably, just because they felt like it. The fiber-optic strands were all connected to a noiseless electric motor inside its base that played a continuous, kaleidoscopic light show over a twenty-four-hour cycle. Pinpricks of brilliant cobalt blue turned crimson, then melted into oranges, yellows, greens and violets, producing a stained-glass window made by aliens: a dandelion burst of fireworks blazed, shimmering tendrils of light cascading slowly into a moonlit sea. Comets screamed across the universe, smashing into each other, exploding in luminescent chunks that hurtled furiously into the ocean below, sending up waves that climbed up and up and up, becoming a mountain that metamorphosed into a temple. Across the front of the temple appeared letters-Phoenician or Greek, perhaps-scratched out in a fiery ink, hot as molten lava, that seemed to flow from an angry Creator's fountain pen. Mene mene tekel upharsin. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting? Charley led his guests in to dinner.

  The commissioner of customs squeezed the arm of the military district commander.

  "Did you notice something?" he said.

  "What?"

  "His guests. They're all men."

  "So?"

  "Where are the women?"

  "Back home," laughed the military commander. "Maybe he wants to try the canuweras." The canuweras are peculiar to Iquitos-Venice of the Amazon-prostitutes who ply their trade in dugout canoes.

  "They don't look like businessmen to me. Look at them. They look like bodyguards. And what about these matchbooks? Conquistador?"

  "Well, ask him. Myself, I'm going to eat."

  Charley said, "We're having a very simple supper tonight, I hope you don't mind." Stewards entered with platters, cold pear soup sprinkled with mint leaves, poached guinea hen eggs on fried toast layered with chutney and carpaccio, miniature acorn squash stuffed with cold ratatouille and dusted with Parmesan cheese, green tomatoes in balsamic vinegar topped with a cilantro seviche.

  "I'm trying to shuck some weight," Charley said, smiling. Stewards appeared with more platters bearing grapefruit sorbet in Siamese incense vessels adorned with candied violet blossoms. Then more platters, the main course: small filets of Chateaubriand wrapped in bacon, grilled mushrooms in beurre rouge, pencil-thin spears of fresh asparagus. Chateau Lafon-Rochet '66.

  Charley spoke excitedly about the trip. He said he'd always dreamed of going up the Amazon, and now that he was in the Indian summer of his life he was finally going to do it. He said how grateful he was to the senator for making it possible.

  The senator, overcome by the wine and Charley's companionship, suddenly turned to the military commander and demanded that two Peruvian Navy patrol boats escort the Esmeralda on her trip upriver.

  Charley placed his hand on the senator's arm. "Felipe," he said, "that's most gracious, most generous, but hardly necessary. And of course, it would be a scandal if our friends in the press"-everyone chuckled-"learned that the vital resources of your fine military were diverted to protecting a silly old gringo off on a pleasure cruise."

  "But, Charley," said the senator, "the Huallaga region is… bueno, un poco desequilibrado."

  Lovely way of putting it: "a little unbalanced." Just a few weeks ago Sendero had floated twenty decapitated corpses down the Huallaga past a base where DEA men were stationed.

  "Why not go up the Maranon River?" he said. "Ecologically speaking, the Maranon is fantastic." Everyone agreed.

  "I don't doubt it for a moment," said Charley, signaling for the dessert, "but my heart is set on seeing the 'Eyebrow of the Jungle.' I've read so much about it, you see."

  "Well," sa
id the senator, "the 'Eyebrow of the Jungle' is in a situation of lamentable extremity. Since the 1970s, almost a million hectares of the forest has been cut down by the narcos for the cultivation of coca."

  "Is that a fact?"

  "Yes. And now as a result we have erosion problems. For the first time in seven thousand years, eh? When the Inca planted his little coca, he built trenches, with stone walls, with yucca plants interspersed here and there to keep the soil from sliding off the mountain. Now-pah!-you think the narcos care about erosion?"

  "Deplorable," said Charley.

  "And what they flush into the soil! The chemicals they use for the refining. In one year, Charley, fifteen million gallons of kerosene. Eight million gallons of sulfuric acid. Two million of acetone, two million of toluene and sixteen thousand tons of lime. In one year."

  "Criminal," said Charley.

  "Coca cultivation has become the Attila of tropical agriculture."

  "I'm sorry, Felipe, the what?"

  "Attila the Hun."

  "Ah," said Charley, "dessert. I hope you like ice cream."

  It was a map of the Amazon done entirely in ice cream: the jungle floodplain in pistachio; the river, snaking from the Atlantic to the Andes, a geographically precise vein of mocha fudge. The Cordilleras rose on vanilla slopes to sorbet summits of blue and boysenberry ices. Candied jaguars, marzipan toucans, caramelized coleoptera, licorice crocs and skulls of spun sugar. (Charley wondered, were the skulls in good taste?) Chef Ralph had contrived an active volcano that spouted wisps of vapor by means of a concealed chip of dry ice.

  Charley handed the knife to the senator, saying he would be honored if he would make the first cut.

  The senator made several false starts. Finally, with a smile, he put the tip of the blade into Lima-represented by a macaroon star. "Since everyone blames Lima for everything these days." Everyone laughed.

  Coffee, brandy and cigars were taken on the helicopter deck. The commissioner of customs lit Charley's cigar.

  "I found these in an ashtray," he said, showing Charley the Conquistador matches.

  Charley puffed, looked at them. "Hm," he said, "how about that. Donald Trump was aboard couple of weeks ago, they must be from his boat." Charley winked, "Wouldn't you know he'd call a boat that?"

  The abrazos at the head of the gangway were copious. Charley sent them all off with a case of the wine. Forty-nine ninety was fueled and ready at the airport to fly the senator back to Lima. The next morning it flew back to the States with the stewards and crew. Esmeralda cast off her lines at 0900 and Charley nosed her bow into the current. The beggars waved rosaries at him. He gave them three blasts on the ship's horn.

  19

  "Hey, Frank-Jesus, what the hell happened?"

  It was Taccarelli, from Training. "Nothing, it's fine."

  "Nothing? You look like a fucking hard-boiled egg."

  "I fell asleep under the tanning machine. It's a little sunburn is all."

  "Oh. Hey, uh, how's your sister, Frankie?"

  Something about the way he said it. "She's much better, thank you, Al."

  Taccarelli gave him a conspiratorial wink. "Gubanovich mentioned."

  "Mentioned what, Al?"

  "You know. Your stomach problem. Kincaid's bullet acting up?"

  "Uh, yeah. It's nothing."

  "You okay?"

  "I'm much better, Al."

  "Is it-"

  Diatri sighed. "It's my bowel, Al. My small bowel, if you really want to know." These elevators.

  "Gubanovich said you were Intensive Care the whole time."

  "You two had a nice mention about all this, I see. Well, I got news for you, Alphonse. There's no such thing as Intensive Care anymore. No one cares. Except one of the cleaning ladies. She gave me a flower. It was dead, but it was nice of her anyway. Other than her, no one really gives a rat's ass. One night the guy next to me dies, right? One minute his heart monitor is going beep… beep… beep, then it's going beeeeeeeeeeeeeep, you know, we-now-conclude-our-broadcasting-day? Six minutes. I counted six minutes before they came. I'm yelling for them and I would've got out of bed except for this tube in me the size of a garden hose and I'm a little afraid my plumbing is going to come out with it if I get out of bed. Six minutes. You know what they were doing? They were watching the ball game. The guy was cold by the time they came in. He was a TV dinner. Suddenly they're charging in shouting, 'Stand back, stand back!' like I'm trying to block their way, and they start hitting him with the paddles. The fibrillator paddles. They must have hit him twenty times. They had this poor guy jumping like a frog. I'm telling the fangool with the paddles, 'Hey, he's been dead for a week. Why don't you thaw him out first. Put him in the microwave.'"

  "Jesus. What hospital was it?"

  "The VA."

  "The VA? Oh yeah, right, Gubanovich said."

  "Next time, I don't care if the SAC does find out. I'm not going back to the VA."

  "I'll see you round, Frank. Take care of yourself, okay?"

  "You bet. Hey, Al, listen, Gubanovich wasn't supposed to go shooting his mouth off. I mean, I don't mind you knowing, but-"

  "Not to worry, Frankie. My hand to God."

  Diatri went looking for Gubanovich to kill him. After all that, he goes and tells Taccarelli. Jesus Christ. Now everyone will be coming up and asking, "Yo, Frankie, how's the bowel?"

  All that, to keep the SAC from finding out, driving himself to the VA instead of riding in an ambulance to a city hospital, where at least you stood a 50-50 chance, sweat pouring off, shouting out Sinatra songs to keep from passing out from the Red Meteor in his gut. Then when he could finally stand up, staggering with the rolling IV stand and a quarter down a corridor full of Korean War vets, calling the SAC on the pay phone and asking if he could take his back vacation now, effective right away. The SAC saying, "Jesus, Frank, we're up to our tits here. Plus we got the Bennett dog and pony show next week. It's a lousy time." Just then the loudspeaker blasting out, "Dr. Deaver, please report to surgery, Dr. Deaver…" and the SAC suspicious, saying, "Are you in a hospital, Frank?"

  Diatri bending over from the Red Meteor, holding on to the IV stand. "Yes, I am, Jim. I'm here… I'm here looking after my baby sister."

  "Jesus, Frank. What's wrong?"

  "We're not sure at this point, Jim. But it doesn't look real great. They're going to be doing an exploratory. I just need to be with her right now."

  "Of course, Frank. I'm sorry. Why didn't you say? Let us know what you need. Anything."

  "Thank you, Jim. That means a lot to me."

  Then after they finally release him-looking like hell on toast-it occurs to him to get under the tanning machine to get a little color back so the SAC won't wonder. Falls asleep and wakes up looking like Kid Hiroshima. Terrific. Now on top of all that, Gubanovich is going around telling people.

  "Hey, Frank. How's your sister?"

  "A lot better, thanks, Juanita."

  "I woulda sent a card but I didn't know what hospital."

  "I appreciate that."

  "You lose weight?"

  "Just a few pounds. I've been doing a lot of jogging."

  "Take care, Frank."

  He felt badly lying to people like Juanita. The phone rang. It was Liestraker, in Miami.

  Liestraker… yeah, right, Liestraker. "So how's it going?" Diatri tore open a packet of chocolate powder and mixed it with the baby formula they had him drinking. Baby formula. He stared glumly at the dirty-looking bubbles.

  "Reason it's taken so long," Liestraker was saying, "is there's 467 hotels in the Greater Miami area. We had to get grand jury subpoenas from the AUSA to look at their registers, and the subpoenas kept expiring, and I had to keep going back and…"

  "Uh-huh." Diatri drank. It wasn't so bad.

  "Then there's the Catholic churches. There's 118 of them. We didn't need GJSs for those, but just calling all of them, that took time. Also…"

  What was his first name? Mike?

  "Michael," Diatri i
nterjected. "Let me explain my situation up here. The sixty days is up on my case, the Raid Jacket case I told you about. I had to file a Status Rep with my AUSA, and he didn't give me Concurrence to Continue. The reason for that is, I don't have anything. What I do have is an inbox that looks like Magilla the Gorilla used it for a toilet. Okay? So what do you got, Mike?"

  "I've got five names. Hispanic males, medium height, strong build, mid to late forties, no distinguishing characteristics, occupying rooms in area hotels between December 7 and December 22."

  "Okay. Now, I assume you already ran them through NADDIS."

  "Affirmative and negative."

  "How's that, Mike?"

  "Yeah, I ran them through NADDIS, and no, none of them are in it. They're all NADDIS negative."

  "Okay, shoot."

  The names on Liestraker's list consisted of a Docal, Bollines, Quintaro, Velez and Ravines, respectively a United States Information Officer, a magazine ad salesman, a food wholesaler, a security consultant and a stockbroker. Liestraker gave him what he had on each. He said, "Ravines was busted in San Diego two days ago."

  Diatri sat up. "Yeah?"

  "He assaulted a contractor. He had this new roof put on his garage and it fell on his Mercedes and crushed it and he beat the shit out of the guy apparently. He's out on a bond. You want to talk to him?"

  "No. Maybe. What about the churches?"

  "One got a call about a demonic possession but it turned out to be D.T.s. Plus the usual stuff. No requests for confessions over the phone."

  "Anything on Barazo?"

  "Nada. His people have been pretty busy killing each other. We heard one group of them killed another group on a hot drop on Andros."

  "Okay, Michael. That's good work. I'm gonna mention it to the Administrator if I ever see him."

  Diatri stared at the five names on his list. Docal was in Bucharest, Bollines was in Tulsa, Quintaro in Chicago, Velez in Rosslyn, Virginia. He worked for a company named Becker Industries.

  He got through to someone in Personnel at Becker and identified himself as a credit checker with Macy's department store. Mr. Velez had put them down as a reference, just checking… Right. Previous employer?… New York Police Department? Right, that's what it says here.