“You must be doing okay, Jack, heard you bought a dish.”
“Decided to check out all the weird shit that’s going on in the real world, reminds me why I came here. I’ll switch it on.” Jack yawned again and headed back to bed, leaving his door open.
“Which cabin do you want?” Slack asked Maggie.
“Yours. I don’t want to be alone.”
They aroused Frank and led him to the nearest unit, where he mumbled his thanks and went directly to bed.
In the house, a tabletop TV offered interminable commercials and business reports. While they waited for the news, Maggie combed through the closet and when she emerged had on shorts and a T-shirt, “Pura Vida, Costa Rica,” her nipples making peaks in the fabric. Slack tore his eyes away.
When CNN Headline News came on, the story of the hour was, as expected, out of peaceful little Costa Rica. A brief intro, then: “And here, on location, with some unusual late-breaking developments, is Latin correspondent Monique Delgado.” A brunette with a wide grin that she couldn’t seem to suppress.
“Well, Willard, I barely know where to start, but a raid took place in the dead of night upon this isolated house in the rugged hills of southern Costa Rica.” A ground-to-satellite transmission showed the area lit up, figures moving about, yellow police tape everywhere, which meant Ham’s people had finally showed up.
Monique Delgado talked rapidly, there was much to tell. Late last evening, media had been tipped by an anonymous caller to show up at this location, and arrived to find Senator Chuck Walker and a squad of “anti-terrorist militia” being fired upon while attempting to approach the house, which was later found deserted. “Except for this one man.”
Footage was shown of Benito Madrigal walking out past a front door that had been blown off its hinges. Though his hands were on his head, he was singing the national anthem, defiant to the end. Maggie was relieved to see him unharmed, and Slack gave his image a revolutionary salute. “Qué bruto, maje.”
“No one has yet been able to explain how Benito Madrigal, supposedly under lock and key in San José, had found his way here, and was then deserted by his small band of supporters. There are many questions being asked, Willard. Allegations have been made that Senator Walker jumped the gun, apparently without the knowledge of the State Department. Some people are describing it as an embarrassing boondoggle.”
Walker, the author of that boondoggle and new holder of the title of all-around fuckup, was unavailable for comment. No mention of Slack Cardinal or Elmer Jericho or any missing four million dollars, no hint that Maggie had escaped.
The only other interesting shot was of Ham Bakerfield pushing a camera away, most of his words bleeped, but something to do with getting these assholes, presumably meaning the press, out of here. The old man was in a rage.
Delgado concluded with a flourish: “Somewhere in this peaceful land, in this so-called Switzerland of the Americas, two brave women continue their horrific ordeal at the hands of a band of fanatics who have boasted they will stop at nothing to realize their demands. Back to you, Willard.”
“And we all continue to pray for Gloria-May and Maggie,” Willard intoned.
Slack turned off the set and led Maggie to their cabin, it was spartan, a double bed and furniture enough to satisfy the backpack tourists Jack catered to, a curtained alcove with shower and toilet. He placed the duffle bags at the foot of the bed, smoothed them out. “This may be my last and only chance to crash out on four million dollars.”
Maggie strolled about, straightening chairs, brushing off the bed, the pillows, tucking corners in.
“I’ll be taking the Suzuki tomorrow, so maybe you and Frank can get to Quepos by taxi. Don’t talk to anyone but Ham Bakerfield, he’s an honest old buzzard, so don’t be afraid to pass on our suspicions about Walker. He’ll want to pick up Elmer fast; tell him to squeeze him hard. And don’t tell him where I’ll be tomorrow night.”
“I’m not going to Quepos. I’m going with you.”
Slack thought she was joking until he saw her set expression. “As much as I’d enjoy your company, I have to say no. I’m not traipsing off to a tea party.”
She made a face — that had sounded somehow sexist. “No, you’re not dumping me now, Mr. Slack Cardinal. If you’re right about Chuck Walker, this is an incredible story and I intend to see it through. As far as I’m concerned you rescued me, so you’re stuck with me.”
La Brava Schneider. “I’m going to have to think about it. Let’s talk in the morning when our heads are clear.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
He pulled off his wet shirt. He’d found a baggy sports shirt in Jack’s closet, it would do for tomorrow.
“How did you get those scars on your back?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“They look like whip marks.”
“Ancient history.” He covered himself with a sheet and lay down on the duffle bags, groaning, all his bones sore.
Maggie took a shower, doused the lights, and stretched out on the bed. There was a long silence, and Slack assumed she had fallen asleep. But she finally said, “You don’t have to sleep on those uncomfortable bags. This is a double bed.”
“I’m fine here.”
“Honestly, there’s lots of room.”
“I don’t think I should.”
“Why?”
“Because I wouldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“You scare me.”
A pillow landed on his head, she wasn’t going to insist.
– 5 –
Too stimulated by yesterday’s dangerous escape, disturbed by concerns over Chuck Walker’s intrigues, Maggie had been denied a sound sleep. Her attempts to nap in the Suzuki were thwarted by Slack’s continual braking and swerving around potholes. They had been travelling for five hours, since six a.m., climbing up and over the volcanic hump of Costa Rica before descending toward the eastern shore. But now progress was sluggish behind a logging truck, its airbrakes hissing and belching down the bends and twists.
They were in cloud forest, its mists obscuring their route. Occasionally, through gaps, she glimpsed scenes of dream-like beauty, mist tangled in Cortéz trees that were exploding with masses of yellow bloom. But Slack wasn’t enjoying the scenery; he was swearing at the truck ahead, convinced bootleg loggers had pillaged its cargo from the forest. His concern for the environment seemed almost obsessive: pesticides from banana plantations were poisoning rivers flowing into the Atlantic, turtles were threatened, reefs endangered.
Her pessimistic tour guide could easily have tiptoed away this morning with the sacks of money and abandoned her to her dreams, but he had awakened her at daybreak. Before leaving, they had aroused Frank Sierra. “I’ll check in when you’re done explaining to Ham that you don’t know where I’m going, and that Maggie insisted on coming along.”
That bulge in the buttoned pocket of Slack’s shorts was a gun – it made Maggie nervous but did not dim her resolve to help Halcón and his crew escape in safety. She was unsure how she would react to seeing Glo again after the recent fracturing of their friendship.
A roadside cantina emerged from the gloom, and Slack paused there to pick up empanadas, soft drinks, and a few oranges. They continued on, then dropped beneath the fog and pulled off on a dirt driveway from where she could see the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean Sea. She felt self-conscious as they ate because he was staring at her; she often found him doing so, and in a puzzled way. But whenever she directly met his eye, he looked quickly away.
“What’s your real name? It’s not Jacques Cardinal.”
“Jacques Sawchuk. Born in New York, but my mother was French, my father Ukrainian.”
“Well, I’m pleased you’re still a Jacques — I was worried you’d be a Gaston or an Alphonse.”
Unexpectedly – and never before seen – a smile appeared, crinkling the corners of his lips. Usually, he was sternly serious, almost funereal, frighte
ning her with his vast collection of disasters befalling the planet.
“How does a spy become such an eco-freak?”
“One of my last jobs took me inside a group called the Green Commando. Eco-terrorists, that was the standard Interpol line. They opened my eyes; politicians were bickering as the earth was bleeding. I joined Greenpeace, tried to do my bit; it isn’t enough – it’s never enough.”
He held his bottle of Fanta to the light, as if inspecting it for foreign objects. He took a swallow, then stared glumly at the panorama below, at the clouds massing over the ocean. Mist had gathered in cotton clumps on mountainsides and in the valley below.
“There’s still beauty in the world,” she said.
As if to prove her point, a gaudy toucan perched nearby and began croaking like a raspy gate. It was soon joined by four companions; all began hopping around a liana bearing clusters of purple berries. “Keel-bills,” Slack said. “Fruit, nuts, lizards, and other birds’ eggs.”
The toucans took wing, soaring to a lower tree. “They look like toy airplanes,” she said.
“Your mother said you’re a nervous flyer. What’s that’s all about?”
“I can’t figure it out.”
“It doesn’t make sense; you’re too spunky.” Another smile: she wished he would do that more often. His eyes finally met hers. “I could take you to some of my spots. Maybe we could find the Buff-Breasted Blue Warbler.”
“Let’s do that. Birding, I’d love to.”
“I can show you what is left of beauty.”
He said that with soft intensity, and held eye contact. Neither spoke for a few moments, and her garrulous host’s sudden incapacity for words made her apprehensive: was she being cautiously wooed? If so, and however warming it felt, she would be acting falsely if she encouraged him. One does not jump out of love as one jumps out of bed.
I’m not ready, she wanted to tell him; my emotions are a shambles. Abruptly she turned from him, not wanting him to see the welling tears.
“Johnny Falcon, right?”
“Yes. I’ll get over it.”
You scare me, he had said. No wonder.
They were moving at a snail-like pace as they neared the coast; a road crew was paving. “Perdone, estamos trabajando,”said their sign. Slack translated: “ ‘Sorry, we’re working.’ ” Again, she enjoyed the way his weathered face creased like an old suit when he smiled. She felt embarrassed by her admission she was still Halcón’s captive in heart, but Slack had made no attempt to probe further. Indeed, he had abandoned efforts to engage her more closely; perhaps she had been presumptuous, had misread his feelings.
The coastal plain was dotted with ramshackle homes, the climate hot and muggy, the people darker skinned, many of them New World African. From a rise, they glimpsed Limón, a large town laid out in a grid on a finger of land probing the sea. They didn’t want to be seen, and, according to Slack, the art of Tico thievery had reached a state of near perfection in this bustling port, so they decided to avoid the town until nightfall. He took them south, along the coastal highway; after several kilometres they found an access road to a stretch of deserted black-sand beach.
The clouds were still building; her skin had become slick with a sheen of sweat. A daytime darkness abruptly set in; the rain announced itself with thick splattering drops, then came with a clamour. As Slack rolled up the windows, Maggie crawled into the back of the car, where she lay down on the sacks of money, hoping to sleep.
She sensed a formality between them now, an altered, more practical relationship – they had important business to transact.
She awoke from an erotic dream feeling disoriented – where was the meadow on which she was lying with her dark-eyed lover? All was a blackness; it was raining, and she was in a vehicle — the sound of its engine had woken her. She climbed into the front seat as Slack pulled onto the road from their beachside rest stop. Her watch read half past eight.
“Sleep well?”
“I’m not sure.” Her dream had disturbed her: Halcón’s voice, but not his words – I will be back for you.
The rain slowed as they entered Limón, a town that looked damp and mildewed, a Somerset Maugham setting. People were strolling about with umbrellas, lining up for buses, gossiping in front of shops. The bars were bustling, the sounds of salsa and reggae spilling onto the streets. Halcón had said he would be waiting in the main square, under the leafy trees with their resident sloths.
Slack circled almost the entire perimeter of the square before nudging the Suzuki into a hole between cargo taxis. Maggie tugged down her cap and looked away from the two older men standing at the curb; but they were laughing and talking animatedly, and ignored her. Afro-Caribbean music came from speakers inside the bar across the street.
Slack handed her the keys. “I’m going to do a walkabout. I won’t be far.” As he strolled off into the square, she slid into the driver’s seat and locked the doors, leery about guarding a millionaire’s ransom in this city of thieves. A Guardia Rural officer stopped to talk with the two men standing by her vehicle. When she peeked from under her cap, she observed a bottle being passed to the policeman, who glanced about before drinking from it.
Maggie slid down in her seat, and turned again to the street. In a shadowed doorway near the bar, a man wearing sunglasses was lighting a cigarette. He looked sinister, the only local not partaking in the general gaiety.
Several minutes passed, and she was becoming concerned that Slack had not returned. But he was likely waiting in the darkness with Halcón; they would not want to pique the interest of the Guardia officer.
The policeman continued his stroll, much to Maggie’s relief. Then the man across the street flicked his butt into the gutter and walked quickly toward her. She held her breath and suddenly exhaled as she recognized him. She rolled down her window, smiling but anxious.
“How do you come to be here, Maggie?” Halcón bent and kissed her lightly on the lips.
She unlocked the passenger door, then gripped the steering wheel to prevent her hands from shaking. “Get in.”
GAMMA RAY BURSTER
– 1 –
Four persons were lined up behind Slack for the one working pay phone at this corner of Sloth Park, but having waited ten minutes he wasn’t going to give up and kept impatiently feeding the machine its diet of twenty-colon coins. For all Slack knew, the receptionist had flown to Baffin Island to fetch Bakerfield to the phone, or maybe the old man was taking the world’s longest crap. Or they were stalling, trying to do a trace, but they’d be at least an hour getting here, even by copter.
He couldn’t see the Suzuki from behind the bank of phones, Maggie would be fretting. Another coin plunked down the slot, he was fast running out. Get off the pot, Ham.
Finally, a human voice. “He’s coming now.”
“Where the fuck are you, Slack?” The gruff tones of the spymaster.
“This will be brief. Did you collar Elmer Jericho?”
“For what?”
“For … hell, didn’t you talk to Frank Sierra? Get ahold of him right away, he’s got the whole lowdown.”
Ham went off the line for a second. “He’s gone off somewhere. He dropped by when I was at the crime scene. What was your motorcycle doing at that joint?”
Frank was not following the amended rules of Plan B – where could he have vanished? Slack hoped Walker’s Rangers had not intercepted him.
“Where the blazes did you get to? Will somebody clue me in, goddammit?” Ham had started to shout, and Slack had to yell over him.
“Where’s the junior senator from South Dakota?”
“Listen hard, he’s claiming you ran off with his dough and you’re in league with the crooks who did the snatch. If you’ve screwed up again, I’ll personally take a scalpel to your hanging decorations -”
Slack cut through again. “You listen hard. I’ve got Maggie Schneider with me, and I’ll have Glo in probably a couple of hours. Elmer’s been shilling for Walk
er all along. It’s a scam, we’ve all been shucked by a megalomaniac and his hippie stooge. Don’t pull anyone in until you talk to Frank Sierra. Find him. Gotta go.” He hung up.
They’d probably got their trace, now he had to locate Halcón and boot it out of here to do the transfer. It was well after nine, where the hell was he? Slack had already strolled through the square once, this time he raced through it. No sign of him.
Hurrying back to the street, he was stunned to find the Suzuki Sidekick gone, a rusty Datsun pickup in its place. He made frantic inquiries of the two old-timers at the curb.
“The lady in the Jeep, she drive off, mon. With a man in sunglasses.”
The description they gave fit Halcón. Slack felt crushed by the weight of impending disaster. “A taxi follow them, mon.”
They had been careful observers – the Suzuki had headed not east toward the airport but west, perhaps to the seaport at Moín. Likely, the taxi bore one of Halcón’s confederates, maybe Gordo, playing tail-gunner, watching the rear.
Slack felt heavy with defeat. He had a choice, he could walk into the bar and get roaring drunk or he could act on the slimmest of theories: Halcón had a boat at Moín, or maybe a reserved berth on a freighter.
He couldn’t bear the thought of calling in again, braving the old man’s wrath. This was the final glorious fuckup, the one they’d remember him by.
He strode down the sidewalk to the taxi bank. “El puerto,” he told the first driver in line. “Muy rápido.”
As they sped down streets lined with tin-roofed shacks toward the wasteland east of the waterfront, Slack tried to puzzle through what had happened. Halcón had probably been watching their car from the shadows, he’d seen his chance to grab the dough. Had Maggie gone willingly? What did she think she was doing – tripping off to fairyland to live with her prince? She wasn’t thinking clearly, still bonkers over him, she could have stumbled unwittingly into danger.
The Laughing Falcon Page 35
