She inserted a clip, rammed it home.
“Hearts?” she asked.
“The most out of thirteen,” Argenti said.
She flipped a wall switch that illuminated the target range and activated a pair of targets fifty feet away. They were human shapes, average size, made of metal, painted white. Located at left center chest, precisely where the heart would be, was a hole five inches in diameter. Two other smaller oval-shaped holes were like eye sockets in the head. The targets, on an electric track, moved to the left at changing speeds, erratically up and down, and then to the right. Difficult to predict what the next motion would be.
Argenti offered Lillian first try.
She told him to go ahead.
He stepped to the line confidently, fired off the entire clip.
The explosions of the shots, greater than Wiley had expected, numbed his hearing. The smell of gunpowder seemed to cloud most of the life out of the air.
An electronic scorekeeper, a black glass-faced box on the left wall, flashed the numeral 8.
Easy as that, apparently without even trying, Argenti had put eight bullets into the heart. Out of thirteen.
Wiley was impressed.
Argenti glanced at him. No mistaking the self-assurance in Argenti’s eyes.
Perhaps that was the true purpose of this shooting contest, Wiley thought, to warn him off. Was that why Argenti had suggested it?
Lillian was now on the firing line. She raised the pistol, took careful aim and let go at the target. She was unable to control the recoil of the Browning. The muzzle jerked upward. Her shots went high and higher. The last few into the far ceiling.
No hits, not even one.
Wiley remembered her telling him how she’d learned years ago from that sharpshooter. It made him wonder how much truth there was in the rest of her story.
She said to Argenti, “Now I owe you twenty-two thousand.” As though it was nothing.
“Try again?” Argenti asked.
Taking unfair advantage, Wiley thought, the son of a bitch. His impulse was to challenge Argenti, but he didn’t have a dime to bet. What’s more, he knew zero about shooting. The last and only time he’d held a gun had been over twenty years ago in Texas. An air gun that shot pellets. He hadn’t been able to hit an empty beer can at thirty feet.
Lillian released the used clip from her pistol, told Argenti, “I thought I might beat you without your glasses.”
“I am wearing contacts,” he replied.
“You’re a tricker, Meno, that’s what.”
Argenti raised his hands palms up and pouted to profess his innocence.
Lillian led the way upstairs, back to the game room. She turned on the stereo for disco music while Argenti went behind the bar. Rather as an afterthought, Argenti asked Wiley what he wanted to drink.
“Boilermaker,” Wiley said, hoping to confuse the foreigner.
The Italian filled a double shot glass with Old Grand-Dad and opened a Heineken for a chaser. He mixed a concoction of brandy, tequila, bitters and champagne for Lillian and himself. With the dexterity of a professional bartender, even spinning ice in the glasses to frost them. He hadn’t asked Lillian what she wanted, evidently knew.
Wiley told himself that noticing such little things was being absurdly sensitive. Sitting at the bar, he took a gulp of the straight whiskey. The way it burned was a suitable minor punishment. He drank some beer from the bottle.
Argenti carried the drinks over to Lillian.
Watch out, honey, yours is drugged, Wiley’s imagination said.
Argenti made a toast, personal enough to be nearly whispered, so Wiley wouldn’t hear.
Lillian smiled provocatively and clicked her glass against Argenti’s.
They sipped and kept their eyes locked. Then they placed their glasses down, and she turned the music up loud and they danced. Argenti hardly moved. He was like a center post, or perhaps an edifice, around which Lillian demonstrated. She pranced, snapped her head, made hip circles and center thrusts, as though to show various sexual proficiencies.
Wiley was reminded of all the love he’d made with her since yesterday morning. Their first time was already nebulous, obscured by so many subsequent sensations. And now, there she was, at the least mimicking erotically for Argenti. As far as they were concerned he wasn’t there, Wiley felt. He lighted a cigarette, held the match up, closed an eye and positioned the flame so it appeared to be about to ignite Argenti’s beard. Wiley imagined Argenti with his whole head afire. And to hell with her, too. He downed the rest of his whiskey, poured another, took it and his beer with him and left the room.
He wandered around the house some, eventually was drawn downstairs to the shooting range.
He got out one of the Browning automatics. It was indeed heavier than it looked, maybe two pounds, and felt even deadlier in his hand. The human-shaped targets were just standing there. Wiley took aim, pulled the trigger. The pistol nearly leaped from his hand. Lucky, he thought, that he hadn’t shot himself.
He got a firmer grip, took more careful aim, but still didn’t hit the metal figure. How the hell could he miss? He had it right in his sights. The fucking gun was off. He pulled the trigger again and again until he’d emptied the clip without a hit.
Argenti, he remembered, had put eight out of thirteen in the heart. And on the move.
He couldn’t even put one anyplace, standing still.
He kept at it. Became more familiar with the weapon, figured out how to reload it, found a carton of bullets in a cabinet drawer. He steadied his right wrist with his left hand, the way he’d seen police heroes do in films. He decided the trigger was crucial, had to be teased so it sort of surprised the mechanism that exploded the bullet. He took up the slack in the trigger, squeezed it gently, and that was when he registered his first hit in the heart.
He got so caught up in it that he didn’t think nearly so much about Lillian upstairs with Argenti. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he hit nine out of thirteen. Moving.
He had just hit six, his best score, when he noticed Lillian. She was seated on the stairs. From her relaxed position, Wiley assumed she’d been there awhile. She appeared a bit tousled. From dancing?
“Where’s Albert Anastasia?”
“He got sleepy,” she said.
After what? Wiley wondered.
“It’s almost four,” she said. She came over and touched the barrel of the gun. It was hot.
“You’ve really been blasting away.”
“Wasting time.” He shrugged.
“Six out of thirteen hearts is much better than average.”
Better than she could do, Wiley thought. She couldn’t hit the wall.
She smiled softly, and her eyes were soft on him.
He began loving her again.
She picked up the other Browning, checked to see that it was loaded, cocked a bullet into the chamber and stepped to the firing line. She hesitated, faced away from the moving targets, then spun around into a perfect shooting crouch, and, it seemed, didn’t even aim. She fired the entire clip, rapidly. Alternate shots at the heart of one target and then another, and then at the eye sockets to make it more difficult.
Thirteen hits.
She put the pistol down. “Let’s go to bed,” she said, definitely not meaning sleep.
12
First thing Wiley said when he awoke that day was, “I love you.”
Lillian reached to press a signal button on her bedside table. She got up, drew open the drapes and went back to bed.
Wiley said it again. It was easy to say because it was true.
She said, “I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“You’re a fortune hunter.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You yourself told me.”
“I was only bullshitting.”
“See, you even admit to lying.”
“About that, yes.”
“You really love me?”
“Very muc
h.”
“I’ll bet I could count the ways. Actually, you know, I don’t mind that you’re an opportunist, as long as you’re straight about it.”
“I’m not an …”
“I think you are. I mean for other reasons.”
“Such as?”
“The way you make love.”
“It makes itself.”
“Certainly nothing amateurish about it.”
“You’ve got to believe me.”
“That’s how it’d be?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’d have to let me know when and when not to believe you.”
“Don’t you want to believe me?”
“Let’s brush our teeth,” she said.
They went and foamed at the mouth at each other in the long bathroom mirror.
In bed again, pillows plumped and rearranged, she told him, “Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“It still sounds true enough.”
“It is.”
“But I thought I detected a tinge of deception in the word you.”
“You was the truest part.”
“We’ll see.”
“How can I convince you?”
“We’ll think of something,” she promised.
Breakfast trays were brought. Hers had a yellow rose on it with a slip of note paper around its stem. She ignored it while she ate, but Wiley couldn’t.
Finally, she dabbed at the corners of her mouth, laid her napkin aside and unrolled the note.
Wiley watched her closely while she read it.
“Meno,” she said, “thanks me and sends me his heart and says good-bye to you.”
“And good riddance.”
“And he invites us to Bogotá.” She seemed pleased. “Ever been to Bogotá?”
“Colombia?”
“There’s another?”
She picked up the rose. Something dropped from its blossom onto the sheet. A green something so blazing it appeared capable of burning. Lillian nudged it with her finger, causing it to disperse several flares. It was a finished emerald of about ten carats. By comparison, the rough emeralds in the pouch at Las Hadas had been paltry pebbles.
“What do you think it’s worth?” he asked.
“A quarter-million or so. When it comes to me, Meno has a generous streak.”
She held it up to the light for a long moment. Seemed to be seeing something through it. She brought it close to her right eye, held it in place by squinting, no hands, like a monocle. “We’re going to Bogotá,” she said.
“Not me.”
“I knew you didn’t love me. First thing I ask, you won’t do.”
“Try something else.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
“It has to be Bogotá.”
“Where would we stay there?”
“Meno’s.”
Wiley shook his head, definitely not.
“Part of the time,” she added.
He thought it over.
She let the emerald drop from her eye, just before she kissed him a good one. “It could be a way of proving you really do love me.”
“You’d believe me then?”
“To some extent.”
Why was she so set on Bogotá? Maybe, Wiley thought, she needed to experience Argenti on his home ground to get him out of her system. The man did seem to have a hold over her. But then, why so insistent that Wiley go along? Needed him to fall back on? That could be it. However, the way she was maneuvering was emotional blackmail. No matter, if he went along with her, at least he had a chance. He’d keep nicking away at her resistance. He’d be consistent, always there for her for sure, and gradually he’d dissolve her doubts—that fortune-hunter bullshit.
He glanced at the emerald, now nearly lost in the folds of the bedclothes.
Him compete with someone able to give away such a bauble? He didn’t have penny one.
Lillian rectified that a bit on the way to the airport. She tucked some bills into his jacket pocket, making as little of it as possible.
“Walking-around money,” she said.
“Gigolo.”
“Lover,” she corrected.
An hour later, Wiley was twenty thousand feet over the Mayan jungle in her Grumman Gulfstream II. She was napping, curled up in a deep-cushioned chair, all but the top of her head under a blanket. Wiley was slouched, his stockinged feet up on the table. He had given himself a tour of the private jet, from tail to cockpit. It was difficult to accept that this six-million-dollar plane belonged to the hitchhiking marble player he loved.
Was he positively certain he’d loved her so much before he knew she was rich?
Honestly, it was difficult to place all that had happened these past few days in proper relation to what he’d felt at any given moment.
He took his passport from his inside jacket pocket. An official temporary passport issued within two hours after she’d merely phoned the American consulate. Another example of what money could buy without changing hands.
He put away the passport.
His mouth told him he wanted a cigarette. He could go aft into one of the staterooms or, more satisfactory, would sneak a smoke right there while she napped. If she caught him, he’d contend the No Smoking sign wasn’t on. He had been cut down to less than half a pack a day because she was so adamantly against it. Rather than carry a pack and risk having her notice and confiscate it, he had, before leaving, put a couple of cigarettes in each pocket, except those where they would surely get crushed.
He reached into his left jacket pocket for one. His fingers touched the so-called walking-around money. He took it out.
Benjamin Franklins.
He counted them. Thirty brand-new hundreds.
It wasn’t conscious suspicion that told him to notice the serial numbers starting with:
2001 … the Kubrick film.
1812 … the War of.
FE … Fuck Everything.
13
The Las Brisas section of Bogotá was a most unlikely place for a modern skyscraper.
That area, for eight to ten blocks in any direction, was a campesino barrio, inhabited by the poorest of the poor. Starting with the earth for a floor, a newcomer joined to the walls of neighbors whatever sort of structural material could be found or stolen. Several pieces of old lineoleum overlapped made a roof, odds and ends of planks, sheets of rusted tin, even layers of cardboard formed the walls. Windows and doors were merely holes curtained by any piece of cloth.
On the average, there were five occupants in each of these one-room shanties. If a cousin arrived from the country to make it six, along with his wife and son to make it eight, they were welcome. With so little to share, all the easier to share it.
The barrio was an eyesore that no one tried to heal.
In 1973 the skyscraper was proposed. The people who happened to be living on that particular block of Calle 1 in the Las Brisas section were not told or asked about it. One morning the trucks and bulldozers and power shovels came. The shacks were barely standing as they were. The bulldozers plowed through them. Three old people did not get out in time.
Within a week the entire block was razed and cleared.
Those who had lived there grumbled, but they had no legal claim to the land. Nowhere to take their grievance except to confession. The priests advised them not to be angry, for it was against God’s will. Accepting that, they put up shacks elsewhere, such as the adjacent Buenos Aires district, where the barrio had spread to the foot of the mountains.
As construction of the skyscraper got under way, it did seem the priests had been right. It was a godsend. Discarded bits and pieces of building materials were to be had, and there was such an abundance of planks, steel mesh, plastic, tools and things of that sort, surely some wouldn’t be missed. The high fence around the construction site was no more of a problem than the night and weekend watchmen, who slept more than watched.
Thus,
the barrio benefited from the skyscraper. Only three men were caught stealing and were sent to La Picota Penitenciaría. People agreed, the barrio was coming out ahead.
The skyscraper was designed by an architect from Milan, Italy, who had done buildings for Fiat and Olivetti, among others. The supervising contractor was also from Milan, and most of the workers, all the specialists, were brought over from Italy. It was much more expensive, but money was no problem. Actually that additional expense counterbalanced the fact that the builder of the skyscraper had paid only twenty-five pesos—about a dollar—for the land. Through personal arrangement with certain city officials.
Up it went. Thirty-five floors. A sheer tower of glass and matte-black steel, a display of wealth and power sprouted from the midst of poverty, as though fertilized by it. The space around the base of the building was landscaped, and the street was widened and paved.
The barrio children were not allowed to use the street for football play. The building was no longer a blessing. There was nothing more to be gotten from it except resentment. Long expensive cars brought generals and other rich men regularly to Número 1.
That was the address it took, etched over its entranceway:
Calle 1, Número 1.
Headquarters of La Concesión de Gemas—or as those in and around the business called it, with no less veneration, “The Concession.”
It was there that The Concession maintained control of approximately ninety-five percent of the world supply of emeralds. The mines at Muzo and Chivor, Peñas Blancas, Coscuez and Gachala, all within two hundred miles of Bogotá, conveniently provided the monopoly. Mainly the same mines worked in the old days by the Chibcha Indians and then the Spanish conquistadores. The mine locations were forgotten during the eighteenth century, rediscovered in the nineteenth. From then till recently, they had been operated by the Colombian government.
There had always been some trouble with poachers and thieves and illegal mining. However, starting in 1969, problems increased drastically. Shipments from the mines were hijacked, and numerous mine officials were killed. Not a day went by without violence of some sort. The roads, even the main highways from the departments of Boyacá and Santander, were punctuated with the cross-marked graves of prospectors, dealers and smugglers who failed to get their precious goods to market. The esmeralderos preyed on anyone who might have a stone in his shoe.
Green Ice Page 13
