River of Eden

by Tara Janzen

  Gabriela was right. He was nearing the end. The end of what, he wasn’t sure. But since putting Corisco Vargas’s face on Tutanji’s demon he’d felt a lot of endings looming near. Perhaps Vargas’s life, perhaps his own. Certainly his bargain with Tutanji and all the mysteries that had held the two of them together since the night the great sucuri, the giant anaconda, had awakened him from his dreams.

  Even for an Eunectes murinus, the animal had been big, twelve meters, over thirty-six serpentine feet of pure constricting brawn.

  A faint ripple of unease coursed its way down his spine, following a path Will could have traced in his sleep. He had not forgotten. He had not forgotten anything, not the pain, the power, or the fear. The teeth marks on the front and back of his left shoulder were over a hand-span apart. Tutanji had stood by and watched as he’d been bitten, and then made it even further impossible for him to ever forget. The monstrous snake would be with him for the rest of his life, the marks on his shoulder proof of the pain and fear, the marks down his back proof of the power he’d glimpsed, the power that had bound him to the jaguar shaman.

  A sudden wave of weariness had him dragging his hands back through his hair. This was no time for him to be looking at a woman’s legs.

  He pulled a dry T-shirt out of the cupboard and slipped it over his head, and was just about to lay things out for the good doctor a little more clearly, let her know her options were a little slimmer than she thought, when a sound came to him from off the water, a low vibration he almost felt before he heard it. In seconds, the sound clarified itself into the recognizable rhythm of an outboard motor chugging along at quarter speed.

  She heard it too and whirled around, her gaze snapping to his, and for the first time all day, he thought he detected fear in her eyes.

  Her words confirmed it.

  So did the sound of her voice.

  “Fat Eddie was still following us when we slipped into that first channel into the igapó,” she said.

  He’d figured as much, but hadn’t really thought the man could keep on their trail through a whole day of rain. He should have known better. This whole trip was turning into one disaster after another. Meeting up with Fat Eddie in a backwater swamp half a mile off the main river and a hundred miles from anywhere else was way down at the bottom of his list of safe things to do on a Saturday night, but he was guessing the odds were pretty good that the increasingly loud chug-chug-chug coming across the water was the sound of the fat man in pursuit. Like any good crook who’d gone on to claim the title of “Boss,” he was dangerously tenacious.

  “Don’t worry. Nobody boards the Sucuri, not even Fat Eddie Mano.”

  That was the second time he’d told her as much, Annie thought, and she hoped to hell he was right. She watched him pull out the pistol he’d kept shoved in his pants, his face a mask of quiet concentration as he checked the load, his hands skilled in handling the weapon.

  Her own hand was clenched into a fist at her side. The absolute worst ending to the day she could possibly imagine was about to happen—Fat Eddie Mano and Johnny Chang pulling up alongside in their little black speedboat while she and Travers sat like a couple of dead ducks in the middle of a nowhere swamp all by themselves. Cavalry, her ass. She was tempted to tell Travers that she had two Israeli Galils, a nickel-plated Kalashnikov, four thousand rounds of ammunition, an old Remington rifle with twenty-eight boxes of cartridges, half a dozen Brazilian 9mm handguns with a stockpile of bullets, twelve grenades, and twenty sticks of dynamite in two crates on his upper deck—but something told her that might not exactly be the kind of news he wanted to hear right now.

  CHAPTER ~ 7

  “Guillermo!” A voice called out of the darkness. William!

  It was Fat Eddie, all right, Will thought, shoving the pistol back into his pants and covering it with his T-shirt. He’d know that voice anywhere, gravelly, with every word sounding half swallowed, as if it were too much effort for mere syllables to fight past all the rolls of fat to freedom.

  He stepped halfway out the door, motioning for Annie to stay put.

  “Senhor Eduardo,” he answered, hailing the small spotlight he saw winding toward the Sucuri through the trees. It was one of those quirky local facts about a place that while a sizable portion of the one million residents of Manaus knew or had heard about Fat Eddie Mano, the big man himself answered only to Mr. Edward.

  “You stay in here,” he told his passenger, reaching up and dousing the cabin’s lantern. Shadows fell inside the room. “It’s probably best if the fat man doesn’t know Amazon Annie is back on the Rio Negro and heading to Santa Maria.”

  Amazon Annie? Annie wrinkled her nose. Next to “woolly monkey,” those were her two least favorite words. The alliterative nickname made her sound like some two-bit matinee heroine out of the forties.

  “I hate that name,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, can’t say as I blame you, so let’s keep it to ourselves.”

  A beam of light streamed through the cabin’s window, just missing her and continued on, sweeping over the Sucuri’s deck. She glanced out the window and saw a huge, shadowy shape behind the wheel adjust the light until it fell directly on Will where he stood in the doorway.

  He lifted his hand in front of his face to shield his eyes.

  “Remember, stay in here and keep out of sight,” he said under his breath, then walked out onto the deck.

  “Guillermo, meu amigo!” the fat man said.

  “Oi, Senhor Eduardo,” Travers replied, his voice a warm and lazy drawl Annie barely recognized, his words slightly slurred. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn he’d spent the last few hours tossing back shots and chasing them with beer, just a guy out on the river who wasn’t going to let a few bullets at dawn ruin his whole day.

  “Tudo bem?” the fat man asked, and Annie felt the speedboat bump up against the Sucuri.

  “Vou bem. Vou bem,” Travers replied, and the two men fell into an easy chat about the weather, and the rain, and the river. Annie couldn’t see Travers from her position by the window, but she could see Fat Eddie, at least his back, the fat straining at the seams of a striped brown and orange shirt, his black ponytail making a chunky question mark at the base of his neck. He was amazingly huge, seemingly too huge to move, certainly too huge to climb out of the speedboat and board the Sucuri—not without sinking them both.

  She waited to see if Johnny would appear from beside the gargantuan man and add a greeting. When he didn’t, she figured he was standing stoically near the helm, hidden by the fat man’s bulk. Every time she and Johnny had met, he’d had a thug standing near, silent and threatening. It was probably to her advantage if Johnny wasn’t “amigos” with Travers. She didn’t think this was the time or place to be admitting she knew Johnny Chang, either.

  Of course, there was the possibility that Fat Eddie and Johnny didn’t even know she was on the Sucuri. No one could have seen her from where she’d been inside the cabin. She hadn’t been at the porthole that long.

  “The police this morning. It was close for you, no?” Fat Eddie asked when the conversation drifted into a lull.

  “Yes, close. Obrigado, your interference was much appreciated,” Travers said.

  “De nada, Guillermo, de nada. I am pleased to see you safe, but what of the woman? The little blond cat?” Fat Eddie rasped in his strange, word-garbling voice. “Where is she?”

  Annie’s heart sank into her stomach. So much for not being seen.

  “Elena Maria Barbosa?” Travers asked with drunken artlessness, rattling off some unknown woman’s name without a moment’s hesitation. “I left her in Santo Antonio, gave her back her money. She was trouble, senhor. This morning, well, I was still too drunk to notice, but today on the river, ahh”—he made a sound of disgust—“today I could tell she was trouble.”

  Annie swore silently and glanced toward the door. If Travers was wrong, and they did get boarded, his lie wouldn’t hold up for any longer than it took for
Johnny to walk into the cabin. There was no place to hide in the small room—but she could slip over the side of the boat, into the water. Ten feet from the Sucuri no one would be able to sec her. When Fat Eddie left, assuming he would, she could climb back on board, assuming Travers wouldn’t leave without her.

  Those were some pretty big assumptions—and what else was out there hunting tonight? she wondered. A twelve-foot caiman? Or a hungry school of piranhas?

  Or something even worse?

  “I’m so sorry to tell you this, my friend,” Fat Eddie said, sounding truly contrite, “but this woman, she lied to you. Her name is not Elena Barbosa. It is Annie Parrish—Doutora Parrish—and she has some cargo that belongs to me.”

  Another silently virulent curse left Annie’s lips. Johnny had sold her out.

  “Cargo?” Travers’s voice rose indignantly. “Yes, the woman has cargo. Too much cargo for what she paid. She loaded it last night, while I was with you, my friend, drinking cachaça, but I put it off, all of it, four hours ago on the dock in Santo Antonio. It was a mess... bagunça. Too many boxes, too many crates for my boat.”

  “Crates, eh?”

  “A dozen,” Travers confirmed. “Far too many for the Sucuri, when I already had a full load of freight going from Manaus to São Gabriel.”

  Fat Eddie looked toward the upper deck, where Travers must have gestured.

  “I am only missing two,” the fat man said, then grew silent, as if he were thinking. After a moment, he lifted his hands to his sides in a gesture of reluctant acceptance. “She has stolen from me, Guillermo, two crates of guns, I fear, and I must have them back.”

  Annie closed her eyes and called herself every kind of fool. Johnny had sold her guns he’d stolen from Fat Eddie Mano.

  In actuality, she decided, her chances of being eaten by a caiman were pretty slim, ditto for the piranhas, especially when compared to the chances of something bad happening to her at the hands of Fat Eddie.

  “Guns?” Travers suddenly didn’t sound nearly so drunk. “She stole guns? From you?”

  “Sadly, yes, my friend.” Fat Eddie shrugged again. “Did you see any guns when you left her in Santo Antonio?”

  “None, but I wasn’t looking for guns, senhor. In the rain, after last night and this morning, I just wanted to be rid of her.”

  “I must have them back,” Fat Eddie sighed, “or a banker in São Paulo is going to be very unhappy.”

  Annie was unhappy, pretty damned unhappy, and growing more so by the minute. She narrowed her gaze as she peered out the window, trying to see around Fat Eddie’s bulk. Where was Johnny, the slimy bastard?

  “Yes, yes, this is all very sad,” Travers agreed, utterly convincing in his drunken empathy. “But Elena—this Doctor Parrish—is in Santo Antonio tonight.”

  “Then I must return to Santo Antonio.” Fat Eddie heaved another big sigh. “And you, Guillermo, what will you do?”

  “Sleep,” Travers answered simply, “and in the morning I will continue up the river. I guarantee you, senhor, that the cargo you entrusted to me last night will be delivered as promised.”

  “Good. This is good news. I know I can always count on you, Guillermo. Some people say you’re crazy, but me”—he tapped a finger on his forehead—“I say crazy is good.”

  Travers’s response was too soft for Annie to hear, but it made the fat man laugh.

  “Yes, this is true.” He chuckled a bit more, then eased himself with a deep breath. “Before I go, I would like to see the stones once more. Could you get the bag for me, Guillermo?”

  “Sim, of course, senhor.”

  Stones? Annie could only think of one kind of stones Fat Eddie might be interested in, gemstones—and after an amicable night of drinking themselves under the table, William Sanchez Travers was transporting a bagful of them for the jungle city’s biggest crook.

  Damn. She was in more trouble than she’d thought. Maybe she should get one of those guns she’d gone to so much trouble to buy.

  For someone pretending to be drunk, though, Travers moved awfully damn fast. He was at the door before she’d gotten halfway across the cabin—and when he advanced inside, she retreated. In three steps, the wheel was at her back.

  “Guns?” he said under his breath, leaning in so close she could see the dark glint of anger in his eyes. “Stolen guns?”

  “I paid for them,” she whispered, standing perfectly still, her heart racing, noting that once more he’d gotten incredibly close to her—and she still hadn’t put him to the floor.

  “You and the São Paulo banker,” he growled, reaching over her with one hand to open the cupboard door above her head.

  “What did the fat man give you? Brazilian diamonds? Emeralds from Colombia?” she shot back, a little more breathlessly than she liked.

  He stopped his rummaging around, his gaze narrowing down at her as he lifted a small bag out of the cupboard. “Both,” he said, hefting the bag in his hand.

  “So we’re each carrying a little contraband, compliments of Fat Eddie Mano,” she quietly accused him.

  One of his eyebrows arched in a skeptical curve. “I’ve got a little contraband, Dr. Parrish. You’ve got two crates of guns Fat Eddie stole from the Manaus police.”

  Annie blanched. No wonder the day had gone to hell so quickly. Her name was going to start showing up all over, in all the wrong places, official places.

  She had to disappear, the sooner the better. Thank God the northwest Brazilian frontier was big enough to do it in. All she had to do was get out of the swamp without getting shot, get to her canoe in Santa Maria, and ditch Will Travers. On her own, nobody would find her.

  “Next time I’ll ask for provenance,” she said with false bravado, giving a small shrug and starting to slip away.

  She didn’t get far. He stopped her with his hand on her waist, holding her where she stood.

  “Don’t move,” he said, his voice lowering to a dead serious timbre. “Don’t move one inch, unless I tell you to, and maybe—just maybe—I can get us out of here in one piece.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, forcing a calmness into her voice she was far from feeling with Fat Eddie less than twenty feet away and Will Travers looming over her.

  He held her gaze for a long moment. Amber light from the lanterns gilded the planes of his face, throwing the lean, artful lines and curves of his features into sharp relief.

  Annie hardly dared to breathe.

  His gaze shifted, drifting downward to her mouth, his lashes lowering, and something about him changed, something subtle but undeniable. Suddenly Annie was even more aware of the nearness of his body, of its sheer physicality, the sound of his breath, his scent—rainwater and a faint trace of engine grease, and the underlying scent of his skin, warm and so very male. He wasn’t any closer than he had been, but he felt closer, much closer.

  “Yeah,” he said softly, lifting his eyes back to hers. “I’ll just bet you can, but it’s my boat, and tonight I’m the one taking care of everything. Get used to it, and don’t make another move for the door.”

  He released her and left, stepping back out onto the deck.

  Annie let out a shaky breath. She had to give him points for nerve, but she hadn’t survived all her years in the jungles of South America by depending on anyone for anything, and she wasn’t about to start now, especially with someone on such friendly terms with an underworld warlord.

  Keeping close to the cabin’s walls, she slipped back to the window, where she could see what was going on. Fat Eddie’s boat had drifted back toward the bow a bit, and she could see more of him besides his back, more of his face—little dark eyes sunk between heavy lids and fat cheeks, a small, nearly delicate nose looking thoroughly out of place amid his other, overly rounded features, the sweat gleaming on his skin. His black hair had been slicked back with pomade into his ponytail, leaving nary a strand out of place. He didn’t look particularly ruthless—until he opened his mouth.

  Annie gas
ped despite herself. He had the dentition of a piranha, his teeth filed to sharp, triangular points, giving his fleshy countenance a demon’s grisliness.

  “Ah, yes,” the man chuckled with pleasure, leaning over the side of his speedboat to where Travers was kneeling on the edge of the Sucuri’s deck.

  Just looking at him made her skin crawl. Men in the Amazon had some pretty peculiar ideas in their heads, ideas about animals and sex. It was all tied up with the social order of machismo, the rabidity of South American testosterone, and the wildness of the local fauna. Annie didn’t want to dwell too long on what Fat Eddie’s piranha teeth might say about his sexual proclivities. She just knew she was getting a gun out of one of her crates, and she was going to strap it on and not take it off.

  “They are beautiful, are they not, Guillermo?”

  Diamonds and emeralds—Travers was shaking them out into his hand, showing the fat man without exhibiting any of the aversion churning through Annie’s veins.

  The stones were rough cut, unfaceted, yet they still caught the light, looking like bright pebbles in the palm of his hand. He had a small fortune’s worth in the bag, and Annie wondered who he was delivering them to in the northwest. After Manaus, there was little but rain forest and caboclo settlements all the way to the border in any direction.

  And mining camps, she silently added, hundreds of illegal mining camps, run by hundreds of donos, mine bosses, who could easily be dealing in gemstones as well as gold.

  What in the hell, Annie wondered, had Gabriela been thinking to suggest she book passage with Will Travers? The old doctor had to know what he was—which was everything the rumors had made him out to be and then some. He was intelligent, all right. Annie hadn’t been wrong about that, but like him, she’d misinterpreted the clues. The intelligence she’d seen so clearly in his eyes had a decidedly criminal bent. Hustling jewels for Fat Eddie Mano was not the idle pastime of a disenchanted scholar. It was a fully colluded crime... not so very different from buying an illegal stash of guns and ordnance from a piece of waterfront riffraff like Johnny Chang.