Wet Work

by Christopher Buckley

  "I have a lot of paintings. Fine paintings."

  "It's tempting."

  "Do it, Antonio."

  He turned toward Charley. "Antonio is dead," he whispered.

  "I killed him." He grinned. "I tell you what, we'll put it to the men. We're a democracy here. Comrades, Señor Becker proposes to give us a painting in exchange for his friend there. What do you say?"

  Charley shouted, "And gold."

  "That's not going to work, billonario. My men don't care for gold. They're politically conscious." He said, "When I was a student in the States, there was this game show on television where you had to choose between the curtain and the box. America's contribution to world culture. So, comrades, do you want the painting, or Señor Velez?"

  The men laughed. "Señor Velez!"

  El Niño turned to Charley. "Vox populi, vox dicit. That's Latin, the real stuff." He nodded.

  "The Amazon possesses the richest aquaculture in the world," El Niño said in the tones of a Marineland tour guide. "And among the many species we have, the candiru is one of the most interesting." The men laughed. "Technically a catfish, the candiru is very small, like a toothpick." The men laughed as if they had heard this before. "It has a great fondness for-how shall we call them?-mammalian orifices." Laughter. "And when the candiru finds one that it likes, it swims up it, like a salmon. Once it has arrived at its destination, it puts out little spines to hold itself there. People who have experienced this unique sensation say it is, well, very unpleasant. The pain of a single candiru can drive a man to chop off his penis with a machete." The men roared. "I wonder what the sensation caused by a hundred would be."

  "No," said Charley. "Please."

  "Let's find out." The men heaved Felix into the tank. He came to the surface gasping and tried to hold on to the edge with his mangled hands. A man standing by the tub brought the butt of his rifle down on them. Felix moaned.

  "Felix!"

  Felix's face began to contort. He gasped. The closed eye opened. He looked at Charley. "Boss."

  One of El Niño's men began unwrapping the bandage of Charley's right hand. El Niño pressed a gun into it. It was Charley's own.45. Charley felt the muzzle of a gun at the back of his neck. El Niño leaned over and whispered, "Put him out of his misery, billonario. But I warn you, if you point that gun at anyone but Felix, you will die before you can pull the trigger, and I will keep your Felix alive for a week."

  Felix saw what was happening. He gasped, "Boss, please."

  "No!" Charley shook his head. "No!"

  "Please, boss."

  El Niño said, "You both have very good manners, I'll give you that. Everything is please."

  "Stop this!" Charley shouted.

  "You have the power to stop it, billonario."

  "Boss," Felix shouted, "I slept with her."

  "It's, it's all right, Felix. It doesn't matter."

  "I slept with her, in the clearing, on the island. Please."

  "It's all right."

  El Niño said, "He slept with-the granddaughter? Oh, that's not good, billonario. But you know what they say about finding good help."

  Charley aimed the gun at El Niño. The gun in the back of his neck dug in.

  "Please…"

  "Do it, billonario. Look how he suffers."

  Charley pointed the gun at Felix. Felix smiled, nodded. Charley fired.

  43

  The compound appeared deserted except for one man with an AK in front of the white house that dominated the large open field. The place reeked of stale smoke. Diatri recognized another smell. He followed it until his eyes started to sting. It took his breath away, literally. The fumes made him gag. There were NO FUMAR signs all over.

  He had seen pozos before, but none this size. It must be almost a hectare, he thought, two and a half acres of coca leaves macerating in kerosene and sulfuric acid and-something else, maybe ammonia or carbolic acid. Working his way around the perimeter, he found four more pits of nearly equal size. It was impressive; this was refining like they did in New Jersey.

  He made his way back to the edge of the compound and put his binoculars on the white house. Where the hell was everyone?

  He heard a shot in the distance.

  He saw them. It was a procession, twenty or more, walking across the field to the white house. He focused on a man near the front with white hair and a bandage wrapped around his head. They were carrying him. His head was down. They carried him into the white house.

  He waited until dark, until the crickets had a good heavy thrum going. He set the selector switch on the det box to the number-one position, disarmed the six safeties. He burrowed down and pressed the red button.

  Nothing.

  "You son of a bitch bastard piece of garbage," he hissed at the det box. He turned the selector to the number two position and pressed the button. This time, the earth moved.

  A geyser of fire lifted into the sky from the second pit. Diatri watched, amazed at his own pyrotechnical creation. It was a volcano, Fourth of July and sunspot all at once. It was great.

  Suddenly everyone was shouting and running out of the white house and a building along the field that looked like a barracks. A man appeared on the veranda and began shouting orders. He ran down the steps. Everyone followed in the direction of the pit.

  Diatri crept to the back of the white house, then to the front. He peered around the corner and saw the sentry. "Psst, asshole." The sentry swung around and Diatri killed him with a short burst from his Uzi. He went inside. There were stairs. He went up them. He heard a voice coming from the head of the stairs. "Luis?"

  "Si," said Diatri.

  "What's going on?"

  "This," Diatri said, killing him. He opened a door and saw her. She was lying on the bed, looking at him without fear, as if he might be room service with the iced tea and sandwich. There was a bruise on the left side of her face. She had on a man's shirt that came down just below the point of modesty. She had Indian features. She couldn't be more than… fifteen? A thin steel cable was fastened to a through bolt in the center of the floor; the other end was pressure-swaged around her wrist. Diatri sighed. There was always some bad sexual weirdness behind the doors he had been kicking in for so long, some naked guy with his dick all coated with cocaine and a terrified lock-jawed teenager underneath him.

  "It's okay," he said. He held the cable to the muzzle of his Uzi and shot it off. He took her by the hand. They ran down the stairs. He opened the door cautiously, looked in both directions.

  "Go," he said.

  She looked at him.

  "Go," he said. "It'll be all right."

  She was fast. He had never seen someone run like that. He watched her until she reached the edge of the forest. She turned and looked back at him. She took off the white shirt and let it fall to the ground. Then she disappeared into the jungle and was gone.

  Diatri went back inside. He found a door that led downstairs. He went down. There were several heavy steel doors. He opened one, and found the room empty except for a painting of-figured-a firing squad. The second room was full of weapons. The third door was locked.

  He cut a salami-thin slice of HMX off one of the sticks on his web gear, inserted a nitro chip and pressed it against the lock. He went into the next room and pressed the red button.

  He heard the explosion, but it came from outside. He looked down at the det box. He'd blown another pit by mistake. He set the selector to number six-the number on the corresponding nitro chip-and pressed the button. The explosion was more immediate. The blast knocked him to the floor.

  The door was blown completely off its hinges. The air was dense with plaster dust. He coughed his way into the room and saw him.

  He was coated with dust. He didn't move. Diatri leaned over the face and blew off the dust.

  "Mr. Becker?"

  Dead.

  Diatri put his finger to the throat. There was a pulse.

  "MR. BECKER!"

  The eyes opened, but they wer
e lifeless, glazed. "Mr. Becker, I'm Frank Diatri, DEA. I'm pleased to meet you. You're under arrest."

  The old man shook his head and closed his eyes. Diatri rolled up his sleeves and saw the marks.

  He got him over his shoulder and walked up the stairs. "You ready, sir? We're going to do this quickly. We're going to…" Diatri thought: What was the plan? There was no way he was going to hump the old guy back through the jungle to the Zodiac. This guy must have boats, though. All dopers have boats, fast boats. "We're going on a boat, Mr. Becker. Hold on now. Here we go."

  He was only twenty feet from the forest when he heard "Halt!" He kept going. Bullets hit the ground around him. Diatri stopped.

  They circled him. A man stepped forward, breathing hard. He was missing some hair. Everyone was out of breath. He said, "Put him down."

  Diatri pointed to the stick of HMX on his web gear and held up the det box. He did a slow 360-degree circle so they could all see.

  He said, "You're all under arrest."

  El Niño stared. He said, "Gringo, it's been a bad night. Do not INSULT ME!"

  They stared at each other. Diatri held the det box to his mouth and said into it loudly, "Charley Bird, this is Delta Baker Actual. Drop a sixty into that pit about a quarter click west of center field. Over." He pressed the button.

  Another gonad-shrinking blast went off in the distance, hurling tons of half-macerated coca-leaf goo hundreds of feet into the air. Everyone watched.

  "Thank you, Charley Bird," said Diatri into the det box. To El Niño he said, "You want another one?"

  "No."

  "Okay. Here's what's going to happen. My prisoner and I are going down that path over there. I see anyone following, anyone twitch, I'm going to call in an artillery enfilade that'll bring the fucking mountains down on you. You like snow? I'll give you so much snow you can turn this fucking place into a fucking ski resort. You got that?"

  El Niño stepped forward. "That's a detonator in your hand, gringo, not a radio. Don't play games. What do you want?"

  "Him."

  He shook his head. "No."

  "I'm taking him back to stand trial."

  "We will take care of that, I promise you."

  "Not in your courtroom." Diatri turned the detonator switch to the number nine position and placed his thumb over the button.

  El Niño said, "Don't be foolish. You're not going to kill yourself for him. He's half-dead already."

  Why not? Nothing to go back to. It was perfect and painless, instant disintegration, four million psi and into the cosmos in a blaze of quarks and protons. Go on, press it! Take all these shit buckets with you. Look at them. Thirty of them. Press it.

  Diatri's thumb closed on the button. The old man moved. It was just a small movement, a breath going in and out of his lungs, but against Diatri's shoulder it felt close, like his own breath. A strange thing happened. The old man began to snore. With all this going on. Some of the men laughed. He'd had an uncle who used to do that, drop off right in the middle of everything and snore. He used to let Diatri steal money from his wallet.

  44

  He crouched on the floor by the through bolt, holding the cable, examining the parted end. At first he thought she must have cut it herself, but his forefinger came away with a smudging of lead.

  Claudio stuck his head in. "Niño, it's Espinosa, on the scrambler." He picked up the phone on his desk. As he did, Arriaga appeared in the doorway.

  "Hello, General," El Niño said. "I hope I'm not disturbing you, but I have something for you. I think you'll be very interested. Do you have your chart in front of you? Look at the river between Campanilla and El Valle. About five o'clock from El Valle, you see the mud island in the middle of the channel? You'll find there a large North American yacht, badly damaged, with an important gringo inside. Dead. I think it's best that way. His crew deserted during the fierce battle when you discovered them trying to leave the country with some valuable Inca artifacts on board, including an arm from the idol of Pachacamac. By the way, I'd like them back afterward… Yes. Yes. It's going to be a very big scandal. He's a significant gringo. He knows the President… Yes. Yes. A major embarrassment. You're going to be a hero. Make sure you have on your clean uniform when the TV people arrive… No, I'm-Angel, I'm just joking… All right. Fine, but not until after three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. I need time to prepare. How's Mariela? And Juanito?… With the Jesuits? Oh, watch out, he'll grow up to be a Communist!" Arriaga scowled. "Well, don't worry, he'll be too busy screwing all the beautiful girls, just like his old man, eh? Hah! Bueno, un abrazo. I'll be watching you on television. Don't forget to smile."

  Arriaga said, "How much do you pay this pwta?"

  "Not half what I pay you."

  Arriaga walked to the desk and leaned over so that his face was close. His breath was unpleasant. He had been eating fried pork. A real cholo, Arriaga. "Comrade," he said, "you confuse bribery with revolutionary taxes. You should not."

  "Of course." El Niño managed to smile. "It's been a difficult day." Arriaga left.

  El Niño crouched again over the parted wire, looked at the still-rumpled bed where… He rubbed the sharp wires against his thumb. Perhaps there was less holding him here than he had thought. His bank accounts in Geneva, Brussels, the Cayman Islands, were all brimming over. There was, really, no need to continue working. Though business was starting to get exciting. He loved the apartment on the Avenue Foch in Paris. The Manet would have to come with him. He couldn't leave that. Bendinck would contrive a way to get it back into the Continent. Rupert loved a challenge. The idol of Pachacamac would be his valedictory gift to his country. It was fitting.

  A single bare bulb hung from a rafter. The walls and roof were corrugated tin, and though it was well after midnight, it was still hot inside and the cheep-cheep of cicadas and the grunting of frogs reverberated inside. Diatri kept putting his hand to his groin, where a few hours ago they had placed the jaws of a large set of bolt cutters. At first he had felt guilty. But he hadn't told them anything very useful, only who he was and who he worked for. He'd thrown in his Social Security number for good measure. He didn't know what was going to happen now, but he wished he had pressed the red button. So seldom does life offer such a clear-cut choice. Why didn't he press the damn button? Because Becker started snoring like Uncle Fabrizio?

  He'd persuaded one of the two guards outside to bring a bowl of cool water and a rag. He dipped it in the bowl and squeezed it and laid it across the old man's head, which felt very hot. Once in Vietnam he'd-

  The old man bolted up and looked at him and shouted, "Felix!"

  Diatri jumped. The bowl clattered to the floor.

  "No, sir. It's Frank Diatri. DEA."

  "I thought you were dead. Felix!" The old guy was gripping him by the shoulder. He was strong. He peered deep into Diatri as if Diatri might be hiding Felix inside him. Finally, with a look of pain, he let go of Diatri and slumped back onto the pallet.

  Diatri remembered from the photographs that he bore a resemblance, same build, hair, permanent tan, the old "olive" complexion.

  "What happened to Mr. Velez, sir?"

  The old man closed his eyes. Diatri looked and saw a tear roll out the corner of one eye, trickle sideways down along the ear and disappear.

  There was a commotion at the door, unlocking, a sliding of bolts. El Niño entered, looked at Charley.

  "How are we feeling tonight?"

  "Fuck you," said Diatri. El Niño hit him in the face with the back of his hand. Diatri jumped up. El Niño put a pistol to his forehead. "Go ahead." Diatri sat down. El Niño said, "That was for letting the girl go." He looked at Charley.

  "Billonario, are you well?"

  Charley opened his eyes. Diatri had never seen such a look pass from one man to another. It seemed to unsettle El Niño, who said with apparent sincerity, "I'd give you some more morphine but they'll be doing an autopsy on you and I don't want… Well, I can give you some codeine if you want."

  "
You're a real prince," said Diatri.

  El Niño gave a small laugh. "A count, more likely, if you worked it all out. Maybe a baron. But you'd need a team of genealogists and it would probably take them a month to establish it."

  "What's the deal?"

  "There's no deal. Well, actually, in your case, yes, there is a deal. Now that we know who you are. I assume you follow sports. You're being traded, to Medellin. It's more in the nature of a payment for a mistake one of my… incompetent associates committed. I just got off the phone with Reynaldo Cabrera. I'm sure you know of him. Certainly he seems to know about you. He's very eager to meet you. He wants you airmailed. You know that ranch he has outside the city, with a lake? He says to drop you in the lake. But not too hard. He has all sorts of things planned for you."

  "What about him?"

  "Oh," said El Niño, "that's all arranged. It's going to be on television. Ask Reynaldo to let you watch if you still have your eyes." He stood and went to the door. "Tell you what, as a personal favor I will ask Reynaldo to leave in your eyes until after it's been on. He can always amuse himself in the meantime with your other… parts. Good night."

  A pair of eyes watched through the barred window opposite, then disappeared.

  45

  " Tearing open the door, Pizarro and his party entered. But instead of a hall blazing, as they had fondly imagined, with gold and precious stones, offerings of the worshippers of Pachacamac, they found themselves in a small and obscure apartment, or rather den, from the floor and sides of which steamed up the most offensive odors,-like those of a slaughterhouse. It was the place of sacrifice. A few pieces of gold and some emeralds were discovered on the ground, and, as their eyes became accommodated to the darkness, they discerned in the most retired corner of the room the figure of the deity. It was an uncouth monster, made of wood, with the head resembling that of a man. This was the god, through whose lips Satan had breathed for the far-famed oracles which had deluded his Indian votaries!"