Green Ice

by Gerald A. Browne

  “That I believe. What of the man?”

  “He saw nothing.”

  General Botero ripped the bars of rank from the Captain’s jacket, tossed them away. The Captain just took it, without a flinch or a word.

  General Botero huffed once and got into the limousine, the front seat. He ordered the driver to get under way with a wave of his glove.

  22

  They arrived at Argenti’s villa around two.

  General Botero hadn’t spoken a word to them during the trip, or even looked back, and from that Wiley assumed a colder reception awaited them. He half-expected Argenti to be pacing the courtyard. However, Argenti was nowhere about.

  They went straight up to their suites. Wiley showered and shaved quickly, dressed and went to Lillian.

  She was taking a bath, submerged except for her head. The tub was made of chrome, like a deep mirror, and the opposing sides of it presented infinite Lillians.

  Wiley put the lid down on the commode and sat. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  The water in the tub was already steaming, but she used her toes on the tap to have more hot.

  Wiley asked again.

  “I will be,” she said.

  She ducked under. Her breath bubbled to the surface. She stayed under for what seemed an impossible time to Wiley. He was about to save her when she came up, red-faced and gasping. She took some deep breaths and the water in the tub became calm again.

  “Poor Miguel,” she said.

  To hell with Miguel, Wiley thought. To hell with everyone else. They’d leave Bogotá as soon as they could. Now she’d want to. If not tonight then tomorrow they’d pack up and go. Her Gulfstream was on standby at the airport. He’d call and make sure it was ready to fly.

  She got out of the tub and into a long white terry robe.

  Was she hungry?

  She didn’t think so.

  He ordered up some cheeses and fruit.

  They sat in soft chairs before tall open windows looking out over the grounds. A sunny day. Far out Astrid and Maret were trying to get a kite up, but there wasn’t enough wind. It would only stay up as long as they were running. The laughter of the two girls matched the afternoon, but it was incongruous with the emotional atmosphere in Lillian’s presence.

  She wasn’t melancholy and neither did she seem bitter. She was more pensive than anything, as though her thoughts kept ricocheting off everything, every sight and sound.

  Wiley knew what was on her mind, let her know that by not speaking about it.

  She nibbled on a plum.

  Wiley leaned over and kissed the corner of her eye, so tenderly she didn’t even blink.

  She turned and looked at him as though judging him.

  For a long moment.

  Then she got up and went to the bathroom.

  Wiley heard her drawing another bath.

  That night Argenti didn’t once mention their mountain escapade or Barbosa. It was as though they’d never been away. He did remind Wiley that there was still a deficit of five million over his head, said Kellerman hadn’t come up with anything to substantiate Wiley’s story.

  Other than that, all through dinner Argenti was in an excellent mood. He told some dated ethnic jokes that niece Clementina, Astrid and Maret gave polite ratings of three: ha ha ha. Lillian gave the jokes at least ten, and it sounded to Wiley like she was genuinely entertained. She was also interested in Argenti’s account of the polo match in which he’d played that afternoon. He had scored the winning goal late in the third chukker, he claimed.

  Lillian listened attentively, filled every opening Argenti offered with at least a sound of admiration.

  Such a change from the way she’d been that afternoon. Her eyes were bright and quick, and her voice had a happy ring to it. More animated than Wiley had ever seen her. Also, she had taken much care to appear casual and at the same time seductive—in silk crepe de chine by Saint Laurent, a dress with a deep, loose neckline, ample sleeves that trailed her gestures. Her hair was ever so slightly in disarray, achieving the intended suggestion.

  It seemed to Wiley that she flashed her teeth quite often and only a few times allowed her eyes to catch his. It got so that Wiley was juggling his leg under the table and tensing his toes in his shoes to let out some of his irritation. He also studied the way Argenti ate, pushing food into that hole in his beard. One of the courses was char-broiled dove. Argenti crunched his, bones and all. Wiley found himself hoping Argenti would mistake one of his fingers for a wing.

  Still at the table, over Amaretto and espresso, Lillian provided the amusement by calculating Argenti’s biorhythms. For this purpose she had a small plastic device made of interlocking wheels and inscribed with exact-looking numbers and a red graph line that peaked and plunged like a Dow Jones average. Each wheel represented a different biorhythmic aspect: emotional, intellectual and physical.

  She set the wheel according to Argenti’s birth year. “What’s today?” she asked.

  “December eighteenth,” Clementina said.

  Lillian adjusted the device and told Argenti, “You’ve just gone through a terrible emotional low, but starting tomorrow you’re on the climb again.”

  Argenti accepted that.

  “Intellectually, you are now on a high. Really sharp.”

  Argenti nodded.

  “Physically …”

  Argenti leaned back in his chair, confident.

  “… at the moment just so-so …”

  He sat forward.

  “… and it seems as though you have a nasty drop coming later this month and early next.”

  “I’m going to fall down?” he asked.

  “That’s not what it means literally, but could be. Anyway, Meno, you won’t be feeling marvelous.”

  He shrugged. “What about financially?”

  “You’re worried about that?”

  “Hardly,” he said, bobbing his head like Giancarlo Giannini.

  “Tell me mine,” Clementina asked.

  Lillian disregarded her, told Argenti, “I’ve never seen anyone with such extreme biorhythms.” From her inflections she might as well have been complimenting his sexual endowments.

  He rather took it that way, tugged at his beard and smiled.

  “Do me,” Clementina insisted.

  “Do yourself,” Lillian said ambiguously, as she tossed the device across to her.

  Wiley thought it was all nonsense, and even if there was anything to it, who the hell wanted to know tonight that tomorrow was going to be a lousy day.

  It was announced that the movie of the night was The Valachi Papers, another of Argenti’s cinematic condensations.

  Lillian said she would prefer some gin.

  Argenti had seen the film a dozen times but not in six months. He was more in the mood for it than Lillian’s systematic, unfathomable, quick-knocking gin rummy play. Besides, she might bring up the eighty thousand he’d lost and forgotten to pay the last time. Nevertheless, he went with her to the game room.

  She didn’t mention the eighty thousand.

  They played with high-stake intensity for nearly three hours.

  Wiley wandered around looking at paintings. Every so often he returned to the game room to silently kibitz.

  Luis Hurtado stood off to one side in case Argenti’s body should require more active guarding. Hurtado also kept an eye on Wiley to see that he didn’t give Lillian any advantages.

  Wiley had a hard time remaining still and deadpan. Several times Lillian held gin and didn’t declare it, and once, when Argenti knocked, she was caught with a gin hand and had to make the excuse that she had mistaken a heart for a diamond.

  Argenti enjoyed every second of it. What a fantastic streak of good cards. He knocked, boxed, blitzed and scored, while she acted an exasperated victim of horrible luck. When they totaled up, she was a sixty-five-thousand loser. She had a check ready, borrowed Argenti’s pen and made it for that amount. He folded the check once and slipped it into his shi
rt pocket in a blase manner.

  The welching, one-way son of a bitch, was Wiley’s silent opinion. He’d tell Lillian to stop payment.

  There would be no creeping the halls that night. Wiley went with Lillian to her rooms and stayed. They got to bed at one-thirty.

  “Why’d you do that?” Wiley asked.

  “What?”

  “Let him win.”

  “Just casting a little bread, hon,” she said.

  Wiley questioned further and suggested she stop payment, but she didn’t answer. She could have been asleep.

  Wiley went with her.

  At nine that morning he was still dozing. He sensed her absence, shifted from his side of the bed, reached with his legs and didn’t come in touch with anything. That brought him abruptly up on his elbows, wide awake.

  Lillian was across the room having coffee and croissants from a silver tray. She was dressed.

  “Going somewhere?” Wiley asked.

  “Been,” she said.

  She had gotten up at six and driven to town. “Tomas and Jorge were killed,” she said.

  “Miguel?”

  “He used the fog, went cross-country and made it. Got back last night.”

  “Good for him,” Wiley said in a conclusive tone.

  “Two Cubans are there now.”

  “Where?”

  “At the foco with Miguel.”

  Lillian poured Wiley some coffee and buttered a croissant for him.

  “What were the Cubans like?”

  “Quiet, black and anti-American,” she said.

  Wiley disliked the thought of her roaming around in the barrio alone, no matter how well she believed she could take care of herself.

  “Miguel was going on and on again about the need for an incident,” she said. “The Cubans were all for it.”

  “For what?”

  “Miguel’s incident.”

  “What does he have in mind?”

  “I asked Miguel, but he wouldn’t say. The Cubans seemed to know all about it, though.”

  Wiley lighted a cigarette. The smoke he exhaled rolled in the sunlight. “Anyway, it’s none of our business,” he said.

  “Apparently, the emeralds that were in the spare were supposed to help finance the incident.”

  Wiley couldn’t have cared less.

  “Now,” she went on, “Miguel has to do something else.”

  “The Cubans will think of something,” Wiley said, holding his croissant out for her to glop it with fresh raspberry jam.

  “Miguel already has,” she said and waited for Wiley to ask what. He didn’t but she went on as though he had. “We’re going to hold up the armored truck when it brings the weekly emerald shipment to The Concession.”

  “We?” Wiley asked calmly.

  “I think it’s a good idea, not great, but good.”

  Wiley told himself that if he kept his temper everything would be all right. “We just got back from nearly getting killed maybe twenty times and you …”

  “Miguel needs the money.”

  “Give it to him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “How much does he need?”

  “From what I gather, a lot. Anyway, too much for me to come up with without revealing all.”

  “Miguel wouldn’t give a damn where it came from.”

  “I’d hate being tagged as a rich lefty dabbler, really hate it. Better I just fuck off, ride the world like most people I know.”

  “I still think …”

  “Miguel has it all planned. He knows precisely when the armored truck gets there, how many soldiers in the escort, the best way to escape through the barrio and everything. The Cubans are going to help.”

  Wiley got up for the bathroom. He walked so hard he hurt his heels. He wondered if she’d be so eager if she knew about the hogs, but then, she’d probably think he was inventing it to dissuade her. Back in the bedroom, he put on his trousers, and for some reason, felt less vulnerable.

  “Haven’t you had enough?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” she said and added thoughtfully, “especially not now.”

  He understood, sympathized but wasn’t swayed. “You won’t be satisfied until you’ve got a tag around your toe, having died from holes like a good rebel.”

  “Not true.”

  “I suppose it’s a slightly more constructive way to go than sticking your head in an oven.”

  That hit home.

  He wished he could take it back.

  “Anyway,” he told her, “not me, I’m out.”

  “You’re quitting me?”

  “Self-preservation.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  That approach wouldn’t work this time, he told her.

  “You’ve quit a lot of things in your life, haven’t you?” she said.

  That also hit home. “I started more than average,” he said.

  “You’re strange.”

  Jennifer had said that numerous times, Wiley remembered. Particularly when they disagreed.

  “It’s one of the things about you that I like,” Lillian told him. “You go against the grain.”

  He wanted to kiss her for that. Instead, tried an appeal to her logic. “Look, Lillian, you’ve got to realize what a loony thing this is and how bad the consequences could be. Those soldiers will be goddamn sharpshooters, and this time there won’t be any fog to fuck up their aim. I don’t care if Miguel has fifty Cubans and a hundred rebeldes, it’ll be a slaughter.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Believe me.”

  “We’ll take them by surprise.”

  “Never. It’s exactly the sort of thing they expect. They know it’s tempting, their making that delivery right there in the barrio. It’s their most alert moment. Every soldier in that escort will have his finger on a trigger. Hell, you’d stand a better chance going for the top of that building and the whole goddamn load.”

  His last sentence hung in the air.

  For a moment he thought he’d convinced her.

  She tossed a hunk of croissant into the air. “Now, that is a great idea,” she said.

  What had he said? The top of the building, all those emeralds? She was indeed a nut.

  “I need money,” he said.

  “Bottom drawer.” She indicated the dresser.

  He took it all. His nine thousand. Picked up the rest of his clothes and walked out.

  To hell with shadowboxing. He packed and called a taxi, which took him to El Dorado International Airport. The next possible flight was at three o’clock: Avianca nonstop to Miami. Fine. He’d drive down from Miami to see the folks in Key West. He’d only been down there once, hadn’t called them in several weeks. They’d be good for him. After that, he’d see what came.

  He bought his ticket. Economy class again.

  Had a two-hour wait, decided against a drink and spent the time in the regular passengers’ lounge, munching unfamiliar candy bars and smoking between bites while reading a week-old Wall Street Journal.

  With a half hour to go he was just sitting there, as though immobilized by the space he was in.

  The three o’clock flight was announced for boarding.

  At ten after three Wiley got up and headed for the exit.

  At the curb, in a yellow Ferrari 365GT Berlinetta Boxer, was Lillian.

  Wiley tossed his carry-on satchel into the back and got in. “Missed my flight,” he said.

  “When’s the next?”

  “Who the hell knows.” He tried not to look at her. “Am I this predictable?”

  “No,” she said. “I was this hopeful.”

  It was, he thought, the nicest thing she’d ever said to him.

  “My luggage is going to Miami. I don’t have anything to wear again.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get it back …”

  “Yeah,” he said dubiously.

  “… or else we’ll go on another shopping spree.”

  They kissed. Three times. She
didn’t give a damn who saw where she had her hand.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “You kissed the legs right out from under me, Mr. Wiley.”

  He could remember the time when such a confession was practically a commitment. Which showed how old he was. Besides, she seemed to have excellent coordination and strength in her legs as she worked the clutch and accelerator to get the Ferrari into traffic.

  “I talked it over with Miguel,” she said.

  “And?”

  “He agrees with you.”

  “No armored car, then.”

  “Nope. We go for the big batch instead. I told Miguel it was our idea. You don’t mind my stealing some of your thunder, do you?”

  “Help yourself.” He still had an erection.

  She glanced over at it and up to his expression. They didn’t seem to correspond.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Something.”

  “I’ve got one foot in reality and all my weight is on the other.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Maybe she did, Wiley thought. But he doubted it. She’d pick daisies in a mine field.

  “By the way,” she said, “I’m having dinner out tonight with Meno.”

  “Call him Argenti.”

  “Okay, Argenti. Anyway, I want to try to spy around a bit. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

  “Good,” he said flatly.

  “You’ve been up there already, haven’t you?”

  He assumed she meant the top of The Concession building, where the vaults were. “Once,” he replied.

  “What was it like?”

  What was the most discouraging description he could come up with? He settled for one word: “Impenetrable.”

  “But it’s not,” she said. “No place is one hundred percent burglarproof. A guy I knew in New York back in the sixties told me there’s always a way in if you put your mind to it. He was an expert. Name it, he’d steal it. We called him Jack the Ripper.”

  “Small time.”

  “Hell he was. Once during the noon shopping rush, all by himself, he ripped off an eight-foot sofa and two armchairs from Bloomingdale’s. The armchairs didn’t match, so he went back the next day and ripped off two that did. He was ingenious, one of the most resourceful guys I’ve ever known.”

  “Where’s old Jack now?”