Wet Work

by Christopher Buckley

  "You're going to the doctor, Frank, or I call in IS."

  "Internal Security? I don't believe this. You want to check my urine, is that it? Here."

  "What are you doing? That's my coffee mug. Frank!"

  22

  "Mr. Becker's office."

  "Good morning. Is Mr. Becker there?"

  "No, he's not. May I ask who's calling?"

  "This is Father More, from Mount St. Mary's College, in Maryland?"

  "Good morning, Father."

  "Good morning, my child. I was just calling to tell him that the Little Sisters of Mercy, with whom we have this affiliation, are making a special novena for him."

  "Well, I'm sure he'll be pleased to hear that, Father."

  "He's not in, then?"

  "No, I'm sorry, he isn't."

  "Are you, like, expecting him?"

  "No, he's on his boat."

  "His boat. Bless him, his boat. I remember him talking about his boat when he came to pick up his honorary degree here. So is he on the Riviera?"

  "He's on the Amazon River, in Peru. Hello?"

  "The Amazon. Well, God… bless him, the Amazon."

  "He will be checking in. I'll tell him about the novena. I'm sure he'll be very pleased."

  23

  "Frank, I never thought it was dope. I never thought it was dope."

  "Uh-huh. That's why you had me roll up my sleeves. Because you didn't think it was dope."

  "Someone said they saw bruises! What am I supposed to think?"

  "You're supposed to extend a little benefit of the doubt. After seventeen years, I would expect just a little benefit of doubt."

  "Frank, why didn't you say something?"

  "It's no big deal."

  "You go hiding out in some fucking VA hospital so we won't find out you're sick from Kincaid's bullet. Giving yourself intravenous glucose treatments because you can't eat anything. No big deal?"

  "A little stomach upset-"

  The SAC read from the report on his desk. "'Evidence of a radio-opaque object, probably a bullet, lodged in the right paraspinal muscles at the level of the tenth thoracic vertebra.'" Stomach upset!

  "'Radio-opaque object, probably a bullet.' Shows you what they don't know. I told them before they took the pictures. I said, 'I got 125 grains of semi-jacketed hollow-point still in me, so don't worry when that shows up on the X ray.' I told them all about it, how they decided to leave it in 'cause it was a little close to the spine. And look how they put it in the report. Like they just found King Tut. 'Probably a bullet.' What else could it be? Someone's key chain I accidentally swallowed with my eggplant parmigiana?"

  "Frank, we all knew about the bullet. But-look what it says-'evidence of recent scarring in peritoneal cavity due to leakage of pancreatic and gastric juices.' You're leaking, Frank."

  "You know what that means? Gas. That's all that means."

  "'Multiple adhesions involving the small bowel with recurrent small bowel obstruction.'"

  "Adhesions-"

  "'Prognosis unfavorable.'"

  "These people couldn't find an adhesion in, in a box of Band-Aids, I'm telling you. You remember they ran Sheppard out on a heart murmur three years ago? Sheppard ran thirty-eighth in the New York City marathon last year."

  "I'm sorry, Frank."

  "What are you saying, Jim?"

  "I can't overrule the doctors, Frank. You've had a brilliant career. I spoke to the Administrator this morning and he told me he's going to be calling you later. I know some guys would kill for a Disability. You're forty-six years old, Frank. You got your whole life in front of you."

  "Oh, terrific."

  "I wish you wouldn't blame me for this, Frank. If it was me…"

  "I broke the Raid Jacket case, Jim."

  "The Raid Jacket case? The Raid Jacket case is dead. You didn't get a Concurrence from the AUSA."

  "I broke the Raid Jacket case, Jim."

  "You did?"

  "We're talking conspiracy to impersonate federal officers, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to kidnap. We're talking conspiracy to violate the Neutrality Act. We're talking eight murders, probably more, and an ongoing violation of the Neutrality Act with conspiracy to murder. We're talking about a leading U.S. citizen with close ties to the U.S. government."

  "Jesus. Who?"

  "Would have made a beautiful case."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm out. You just said."

  "Make sense, Frank."

  "You got your whole life in front of you, Jim. I'm sure another case just like this will come up and jump you up to Deputy Administrator. Take care of yourself."

  24

  "Two months and even Eden starts to look like a prison, Virgilio. I'm restless too. But we can't have this."

  "With respect, Niño, putting his arm in the piranha tank, it doesn't make anyone happier."

  "Fifteen seconds. A couple of bites. In Saudi Arabia, Virgilio, they would have cut the arm off."

  "I still don't think that makes them any happier."

  "He stabbed Paco in the arm. It was a just punishment. Solomonic, in fact. Fifteen seconds, a few nibbles-"

  "Nibbles?"

  "Bites, then. The point remains. I'm not going to apologize for maintaining order. That's three incidents this week. Something had to be done or else we'll all start reverting here."

  "Reverting?"

  "To what's out there, Virgilio. To what we listen to every night in the trees. Our great-great-great-grandfathers."

  "Niño, we need to get some women in here. Or the men are going to start fucking MS."

  "No. We can't afford that now. It's a war, Virgilio. Just because they haven't made their move yet, it's still a war."

  "Someone saw Ramon Lados with a cherimoya, in the drying shed."

  "There's no rule about not eating in the sheds."

  "He wasn't eating it, Niño, he was screwing it. Two days before that someone saw Lobi out behind the lab, with a mango."

  Jesus. He'd ordered a mango for breakfast that morning. "All right. If you think it's so important, all right. Tell Eladio you want some pakis for tonight."

  "I… why don't we just get some from Madariaga, in Tingo, like we usually do."

  "Because Eladio is closer, and more secure than Tingo."

  Virgilio had that pained, Gromyko look again.

  "What is it, Virgilio?"

  "The men say they want girls from Tingo."

  "Why?" I'm not going to make it easy for you, Virgilio. There, he's averting his eyes. So the men don't want Indian girls. Don't want chunchas, eh? Don't want clean, tight, sweet-smelling Jivaro girls who know how to make a man's cock dance like a python? No, the men want diseased mestiza whores from Tingo with bloody underpants, three-day-old makeup and sour mouths from cheap pisco. Say it."

  "It's…"

  Oh, Christ, go on, put him out of his misery. Who wants a good liar for a number two?

  "Okay, Virgilio."

  "Thank you, Niño."

  "But two girls only. Fly them in yourself, personally, and out personally. Take Zamora with you and don't tell that bucket of pus Madariaga that you're coming or it'll be all over Tingo."

  "Sure. You know, I could fit four in the Cessna."

  "Virgilio-"

  "So the men don't have to share so much. For morale, Niño."

  "Four, then."

  He watched Virgilio bound off the veranda like a schoolboy on his way to the barracks to give the men the good news that they'd all have the clap by this time tomorrow. He followed him with his eyes until he disappeared into the barracks. He realized he was grinding his back teeth.

  So you're going to take it personally? Of course not. Then why are you doing that with your teeth? I'm not. Be honest: you're pissed off. Sure, why shouldn't I be? It's insulting. They should… What? Shouldn't be racist? The whole country's racist. It's the most racist country in the world, Peru. That's what I'm trying to change. If a criollo like myself can take as his lover a
Jivaro girl, others will follow. I'm trying to set an example. An example? Is that what it is? It wouldn't have anything to do with the quality of the fucking? All right, the sex is fantastic. Forget it, Tony. It can't happen here. Remember what Max Hernandez wrote: "One-quarter of Peruvians are whites who are unhappy that Pizarro didn't kill all the Indians. One-quarter are whites who feel guilty about what Pizarro did to the Indians. One-quarter are Indians ashamed of not putting up a fight against the invaders. And one-quarter are Indians who would like to kill all the others."

  Your own men, the mestizos, they're caught in the middle. Their hatreds are vertical-they hate up and down. You're not going to change all that just by taking a jungle girl for a mistress. Concentrate on your own enemy.

  He wanted to make love, right away. She wasn't in the bedroom. He called, "Soledad?" She wasn't there. The phone rang, Mirko.

  "We just got a fax from Garza in Medellin. One of his people got into a problem with one of Cabrera's people."

  "What kind of a problem?"

  "A shooting problem."

  "Christ, I told Garza, no contact. What happened?"

  "Garza's man thought Cabrera's man knew he was being followed, so Garza's man shot him."

  "Idiot."

  "A shooting, in Medellin, it's no big thing. They shot two judges there just last week. Who's going to miss a sicario?"

  "Cabrera! That's who. Jesus. Look, tell Garza, ask Garza if there's some way of making it look like an unofficial DAS job. A police revenge shooting for the judges. Something."

  "Good idea, Niño. I'll get on it."

  "Mirko, don't use the fax. And tell Garza he shouldn't be using the fax for these kinds of communication."

  "He used that code of his."

  "Garza's code could be deciphered by a goat. A stupid goat. Use the scrambler. I paid a fucking fortune for it and no one uses it."

  "It makes your voice sound like a maricon's, Niño."

  "Mirko."

  "Okay, Niño."

  Things were falling apart; the center was not holding. The men are demanding whores; Garza's people have fired a shot that might turn out to be like Princip's at Sarajevo; and Mirko won't use essential security equipment because he thinks it makes him sound homosexual.

  He called out, "Soledad!" Where the hell was she? He needed urgently to make love.

  He found her in the solarium, sitting cross-legged on the rattan sofa. She was wearing an aikido outfit. It was loose above the belt and showed the soft brown valley between her breasts, thank God, as he approached, swelling.

  Her coloring books were next to her. She looked up, surprised, reached for one of the books, put it over her lap.

  "I love you," she said.

  He knelt. She embraced him, took two fistfuls of hair and pulled him to her. There was something diversionary in this.

  "What have you got there?"

  She caught his tongue in mid-sentence with her teeth.

  "Kthhhhh."

  He tugged. She held. He pulled. She held. He pulled. Her teeth clicked hard as he got free. He tasted stickiness, salt, blood.

  "Why do you bite me?"

  "I love you."

  "I love you. What are you hiding?"

  "I love you."

  "Show me."

  "I love you."

  "What are you doing with this? I told you. This is bad."

  "I love you."

  He was tempted to roll it up and give her a good swat with it.

  "This"-he waved it in front of her angrily-"no!" He flung it across the room, pulled open her aikido suit and took her, roughly, joylessly, in truth, cruelly. He left her lying on her stomach on a bed of crumpled coloring books, looking back at him-there it was again, this time with the eyes open-the look of Gauguin's kanaka, Tehura. "The night is loud with demons, evil spirits and spirits of the dead… perhaps she took me, with my anguished face, for one of those legendary demons or specters, the Tupapaus, with pale lips and phosphorescent eyes, who fill the sleepless nights of her people."

  "I love you," he said. She turned away. He picked the troublesome object off the floor and continued out the door.

  25

  It lay on his desk, still rolled up from being clenched in his fist, as if it were afraid to unfurl in his presence.

  What garbage. But what did she see in it?-she who had never been beyond the mountains, to whom even relatively primitive Yenan was a metropolis. What was the fascination, for her, in Julio Iglesias, the transvestite Lupe Maldonado or ex-King Simeon of Bulgaria?

  ¡Mira! hadn't changed much since Papa banished it from the pantry. Except now bosoms were permitted. Indeed, bosoms had been making up for decades of strict catolicismo. They bounced and jiggled on almost every page. Advertisements in the back promised larger ones, but you had to go pick them up at clinics in Buenos Aires. Morgan Fairchild, Joan Collins-Macchu Chu Chu-Oprah Winfrey, Ann-Margret, Jane Fonda, Maria Shriver, Carmen Cremosa-ah, after the bosoms come the serious journalism. SORAYA KHASHOGGI: ADNAN ES INOCENTE. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia Enjoy a Vacation in the Balearic Islands with Their In-Laws, Ex-King Constantine of Greece and Queen Anne Marie of Denmark. Oho. His Majesty water-skis. His Majesty falls. His Majesty gets up again. His Majesty enjoys a lunch of grilled sardines and octopus and afterward he will take a nap, as is his custom. Their Majesties are "concerned" about skin cancer. Aha. They use a sun block on their skin. Amazing. Stop the presses. The King and Queen are humans, like us. Just like we do. Her Majesty prefers it from a "tube instead of a jar." She is "rumored" not to like the "very greasy kind." Fascinating. And you would have thought just the opposite. An interview with Dolores Fontana, the astrologer. She says that Principe Felipe of Spain is secretly conducting a love affair with Duchess Fergie of York. It's his child Fergie is pregnant with. The English Queen "knows" about this and there is a plot in Buckingham Palace to say the child died at birth and to send it back secretly to Spain. The Pope knows about it. He's threatening to break diplomatic relations with England. Jupiter is aligning with Mercury, causing some problems for Virgo, and Capricorn is taking a shit on Aries. ZSA ZSA GABOR, JUZGADA POR ABOFETEAR A UN POLICIA. Ah, more bosoms. Good. We haven't had tits for at least four pages. Mother Teresa. A Turkish girl with no arms has had a vision of Mother Teresa, and Mother Teresa wants her to build a pedestrian overpass on the outskirts of Munich where she lost her arms after a car hit her. Senator Gallardo Visits with the American Billonario Charles Becker in Iquitos. He Is Flown from Lima in Becker's Private Jet to the Private Yacht and Back Again. Honestly, Gallardo, your country is falling apart and you're spreading your legs for a gringo with a big boat. Look at the two of you together. The billonario looks like he's screwed a few proles in his day too. Well, you two must have had a lot to talk about. How many people you've screwed between you?… Christ, "The Absinthe Drinker"!

  "There's something about it. A boat like that, here. It's too out of context."

  "He's a rich bastard," said Virgilio, looking through the magnifying glass. "Like Jota Erre."

  "Who?"

  "On Dallas."

  "Dallas?"

  "A program. It's… the men watch it sometimes."

  "Gringo TV? They're watching gringo television, here, in Yenan?"

  "Just sometimes. They're a little bored with the Chinese and Cuban films. They've seen them all a hundred times."

  "Virgilio."

  "I'll take care of it. Did you notice something in all the pictures?"

  "What?"

  "No girls."

  "Maybe they're going to pick up girls in Tingo, Virgilio."

  "They don't look rich. They look more like bodyguards to me. Especially this one. Bundy. And this one. He looks like he's been through the shit, eh?"

  The ascots tied around the necks were wrong, somehow, like silk scarves on pit bulls. The names in the captions, Bundy, McNamara, Rostow, sounded familiar, and also wrong.

  He put the magnifying glass over the Manet once again. He knew the original was in
the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek, in Copenhagen. The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris had an engraving. It was unlikely this was a fake. Rich bastards like this didn't usually go for fakes. He's got Dufys and Picassos in there, a Vlaminck, a Gainsborough, obviously real. So this-my God, it had to be authentic. There was something different about it, but the photo was too grainy to tell. He needed to call Bendinck, in Brussels.

  "Niño." Virgilio was pointing at one of the guests. "Look at the way this one is turning away from the camera. He doesn't want his picture taken. I know him."

  "Rostow." Something about these names.

  "Three years ago, in Tingo, you remember, a DEA guy shot and killed one of Pepi Campo's people?"

  "The gringos had to buy him back for a lot of money. It was a big diplomatic mess."

  "That's him. That's the one. His name was… it wasn't Rostow. There was a picture of him in La Republica. I remember. That's him."

  "Call Yayo in Lima. Tell him to send a fax of it, right away. Immediately, Virgilio."

  Bendinck called back and said that Manet's "Absinthe Drinker" was still in the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek. Rupert was his usual gleeful self. "Were you thinking of making a shopping trip?" he asked.

  "I can't get away right now. Business."

  "Pity. I know the Glypotek very well. I'd love to show it to you."

  "Do you know it as well as the Kunsthalle in Mannheim?"

  Bendinck laughed. "So, were you thinking of an oil or a sketch?"

  "It's hard to tell. It's a black-and-white photograph."

  "Does the face look like Baudelaire?"

  "I can't tell. To be honest, Rupert, I don't remember what Baudelaire looked like."

  "The first was done in 1859. The Salon rejected it-"

  "I know-"

  "He painted another oil version of it after Baudelaire died, in 1867. Baudelaire scoffed at the first one, which must have hurt, since it was a kind of homage to him. Collardet, the bum in the painting, is right out of one of Baudelaire's poems. I forget which, the one that ends: 'He ends up bloodying his head and stumbling on the cobblestones like the young poets who spend all their days erring and searching for rhymes.' Baudelaire finally went crazy from syphilis, absinthe, laudanum and everything else and some nuns kicked him out of their hospice because he kept swearing from the pain. There's Christian charity for you, eh? In the end, Manet was his best friend. He was there at the funeral, and there weren't many, believe me. It's Baudelaire's face in the second oil. Are you interested?"