Marchand Woman

by Brian Garfield

  Apparently struck by the edge of the same reaction, the four black youths at the pin-bowl table strolled insolently out of the bar, one of them looking back over his shoulder, staring at Crobey.

  She said, “I had a brother, a reporter—Warren Marchand. Did you know him?”

  “Yes. He was all right. Kind of stupid to go in there and get killed the way he did, but I liked him. His stuff was good.” He pushed the tumbler of whisky toward her. “Now drink up and tell me everything you know about this situation.

  He took her to a fish place for dinner. The decor was primitive and most of the clientele was black. It wasn’t on the tourist maps, she was sure of that. But the sea bass was edible. Crobey pumped her for details and she found herself remembering trivial things she’d have forgotten if he hadn’t goaded her into retrieving them: the hint, from Dwiggins, that the Mexican reporter (Ochoa? Ortega?) thought he’d recognized the leader; the mention, from Howard who’d got it from O’Hillary, that the leader had a Spanish accent but not Cuban—possibly Puerto Rican. Things like that. Crobey grilled her for hours, going back over the same things until she was sick of it. Finally she said, “Have you made up your mind yet?”

  “I’ll have a crack at it.”

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  “The only suitable reward for a spy is money. Napoleon said that. I expect to charge you a lot of money. In return for which I offer the possibility, but not the guarantee, that I may be able to dig these guys up for you.”

  “How much money? I’m not the Federal Reserve Bank.”

  “A thousand a week, American. A bonus of twenty thousand if I find them. And don’t bargain with me. It’s firm.”

  “All right. You’re hired,” she said. “You’ve worked for the CIA, I gather. Who else?”

  “People who paid me to fly for them or fight for them. You can ask around if you want—a few of them might give me references. You want some names? A lot of them are dead by now, of course. Assassinated in one coup or another. Most recently I was over in Ethiopia but I got sick of it.”

  “So you just bugged out?”

  “I served out the contract. I don’t just bug out. I’ve done contract work in Rhodesia and back in the old days over in the Congo and some other places. A few years ago I was down in Angola. I never sign on for more than six months. You get tired of places.”

  “Do you still fly a plane?”

  “When I can get one. I’ve still got my ticket, AFT license, but I don’t do it for fun. I’m not a Sunday warrior.”

  “You always fight on the same side?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anti-Communist, I suppose.”

  He said, “Not always.”

  It was the sum of his answer. She smiled a bit. “You’re as free with information as a gaffer in a poker game.”

  “What do you want to know? My ideology? I haven’t got one. Zealots bore the hell out of me. I hang around revolutions because that’s where the work is. You ever read a writer named Ambrose Bierce? I had a long stint in a Montagnard village once, the only book in a language I could read being The Devil’s Dictionary. I committed a couple of his definitions to memory. One of them sums it all up. Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.”

  Her eyes puckered with suspicion. She had a feeling he probably had committed a lot of things to memory. She was puzzled by the mask he wore.

  As if reading her thoughts he said, “Some people are satisfied with make-believe, or spectator sports or maybe playing a tough game of handball or squash. I’m not the vicarious type, that’s all. Look, we belong to a race that reaches for the moon and then plays golf on its surface. Why get worked up over what this species does to itself? Maybe when I was a lot fresher and greener I had a small capacity for sustained indignation against social injustice but you find it dwindles quickly with age.”

  “You’re peculiar,” she said.

  “I had a traumatic childhood you see. When I was three years old my father was taller than me. I never got over it.”

  “How can you find these Cubans, or whoever, if you don’t even know their names?”

  “If I start to look like a proper nuisance they may come after me. Anyhow it’s worth a try. It can’t be done too obviously, of course—if they think I’m advertising for attention they’ll pull back.”

  “Isn’t that risky? What happens if they catch you?”

  “I’ll be dead and you’ll be shocked.”

  “Do you need to be so cold-blooded?”

  “You’re pretty defensive, aren’t you? No need to feel guilty, ducks. I’m volunteering, remember? I wouldn’t be much use to you if I was the sort that went all a-twitter every time somebody threatened to cut a sunroof in my skull.”

  Carole grunted dubiously: Now he was flexing his muscles again.

  He said, “Have you given any thought to what happens if I find this lot for you?”

  “I’m not asking you to kill them. Just find them.”

  “You needn’t worry. I don’t go around killing people where there may be witnesses afterward. I don’t know of any country where you can defend yourself for murdering a man by producing written instructions from a woman ordering you to kill him.”

  She said, “I want them exposed. Tried and convicted and executed. I’ve got to force Washington’s hand because, to mix a mean metaphor, they’re dragging their feet. Not to mention that exposing the terrorists is a good way to guarantee their failure.”

  Crobey studied her. He mused. “You’re a lady who’s lived her whole life in a neat plastic-wrapped civilization where people think there’s a difference between the politician in column A and the politician in column B. Somewhere along the line something blows up and you make the amazing discovery that the world contains hate and violence and injustice. Most civilized folks respond forthrightly to that shocking discovery by sulking and whining and complaining. Ducks, I admire you a little because you’ve got the gumption to do something about it, but let’s not pretend that exposing this handful of clowns is going to effect much improvement in the situation. You want revenge, fine, I’ll do what I can for my thousand a week, but let’s not pretty it up with talk about justice and that rot.”

  “Where did you pick up that speech? Humphrey Bogart?”

  “I’m trying to make a point,” Crobey said, not without a bit of a smile. “My getting hanged or put away in Ures prison forty years isn’t included in the price of your ticket. If it gets dicey I’ll shoot to kill—and so will they. This isn’t an exercise in schoolbook justice. You want to understand that right up front, ducks.”

  “I gave up believing in the tooth fairy a while ago, Crobey. I don’t really need your sermons on disillusionment—all I’m asking you to do is find them for me. Now shall we talk about the down payment?”

  PART

  THREE

  Chapter 7

  They made the transfer uncomfortably in a heavy chop forty miles off San Juan. A line came across from the catamaran weighted by a small grappling hook; Cielo’s crew drew the two boats together and with great care they cabled the money sacks across by a breeches-buoy system. Then they used the dinghy and everyone got soaking wet.

  When the ketch turned about and headed back into the Gulf toward the Mexican town from which it had been rented, the three men aboard her were newcomers to her deck. Cielo and his entourage ensconced themselves along the rails of the catamaran and watched her go. The ketch slid quickly into the darkness, running without lights. A good vessel; they’d never see it again.

  It wasn’t a storm, just a wind; the men stood on the open decks drying out in the warm breeze. Someone revved the engines and the catamaran’s stern went down as she wheeled toward home. Cielo with his head thrown back counted stars and felt gloomy. Before sunrise they’d arrive on the coast; the boat had only left port a half day earlier and this was its home registry so there would be no customs inspection, not for a brief fishing foray. The ransom would go ashore withou
t trouble.

  Julio was on the half-rotted little dock to greet him: a bear’s embrace. “Hermano—I meant to be aboard the catamaran to meet you but my plane from Mexico was late.”

  “No harm.” Cielo batted his brother about the shoulders and they watched the men file ashore. The money sacks went into the station wagon; two other cars stood aslant on the coast road and there wasn’t any traffic at this hour—it wasn’t yet daylight. The catamaran’s captain, who was Vargas’ cousin, shook Cielo’s hand and exposed his teeth in a piratical grin and went away to drive his boat back to San Juan. On the lonely coast Cielo studied the sea and the sky and the mountains; then he spoke to his men. “You know where to wait. Don’t show yourselves. I’ll be along by noon.”

  The men—Vargas, young Emil Draga, Luz, the rest—climbed into the two sedans and Cielo watched them draw away. Beside him Julio hoicked and spat. “The old man is worked up.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “He’s angry, I mean.”

  Cielo opened the car door and noticed approvingly that the interior dome light didn’t go on. Disconnected. Julio was good at that sort of detail.

  The money was heavy. There was so much of it in the back of the station wagon that the car bottomed on the ruts. Julio drove very slowly and without lights until they got onto the paved surface. Then he turned it east, built up the speed and switched on the headlamps in a hollow. The Michelins hissed metallically.

  Cielo leaned back against the headrest and rolled his head to the left to watch his brother’s profile. Julio just now was possessed of a sort of Wagnerian sadness. It meant very little; in a moment he might be bursting with laughter. Cielo watched him squint against the oncoming headlights of a truck. Julio had skin like rough concrete, large greasy pores on his nose, a drooping mustache like a Mexican bandit’s. He’d gone mostly bald; there was a black monk’s fringe around the back of his head. He was two years Cielo’s senior but had always deferred to Cielo’s intellect, even when they were children.

  “How did the old man’s grandson behave?”

  “He went wild once—killing the American boy.”

  “Perhaps it was for the best.” Abruptly Julio glanced at him and smiled. He had a very good smile: It changed his face radically, surprising strangers, often changing their minds about his character. “Is it really that much money?”

  “We counted it.”

  “Dios. Hard to believe.”

  “It’s not as if it’s ours to piddle with.”

  “No. Not yet, anyway.”

  Julio wrenched the wheel and a battered car shot past on the left, going too fast for the curves. “Christ. Puerto Ricans make the worst drivers in the world. It’s a wonder they’re not all dead.”

  Cielo had been watching the overtaking car but it shot on out of sight and he relaxed. He was thinking how ironic it would be to be hijacked here on the highway by petty robbers. What a surprise they’d get when they went into the back of the wagon.

  Every security precaution was laid on, no matter how redundant. Julio drove clear into Rio Piedras and eased the wagon into the down ramp of an office building’s garage; stopped at the automatic lift-bar, extracted the computer ticket from the machine, waited for the bar to rise, drove in and parked in a vacant slot. Then Cielo waited by the wagon, a bit unnerved, while his brother walked among the parked cars in the dim silent cavern and disappeared beyond a thick pillar. Shortly thereafter a four-door Mercedes slid forward through the gloom and stopped in the aisle just behind the parked wagon. Julio unlocked the trunk, throwing the lid open. They had a look around to make sure they were unobserved; then with a good deal of grunting and whooshing they transferred the money sacks into the trunk of the Mercedes. It made a tight squeeze and the sedan went right down on its springs. Julio slammed the trunk lid, tested it and grinned. They drove out of the garage at dawn, paying at the booth, merging into the light early traffic. They ran westward, retracing their route as far as the Dorado turnoff; Julio turned toward the sea, driving with one eye on the mirror. No one followed. Julio said, “No trouble besides the American boy?”

  “One of the Marines wanted to be difficult. We had to keep reins on him. But he wasn’t hurt. I’m amazed how well it all went. I mean, one or two got dysentery—that’s unavoidable. I don’t like to think about how their families suffered. But it’s over now, for them.”

  Cielo picked at a fingernail, squinting through the windshield. Everything was murky in the half light. A tentative drizzle misted the glass. They drove through the palm forest and up past the private airfield and the entrance to the Dorado Beach resort; on along a rutted dirt side track, several miles looping toward the cliffs—undergrowth scratched the sides of the car and Julio said, “Maybe someone forgot something, left a clue behind. We won’t know that for a while. The old man’s plans remind me of those guaranteed roulette systems, you know? The roulette wheel never heard of them.… I’m just nervous, pay me no attention. The boy shouldn’t have died, but …”

  “No,” Cielo agreed, “the boy shouldn’t have died. We’ll all do some time in Purgatory for that.”

  “But tactically it may have been right.”

  “Maybe we should tell the old man to his face that he’s dreaming.”

  “We can’t do that.”

  Cielo changed the subject. “Have you seen Soledad?”

  “No, I told you, I just got in from Mexico. I did talk to her on the telephone. She’s anxious about you. I told her you’d see her today.”

  “I wonder if Elena got rid of her cold.”

  “You’d better stop in town and buy presents for them.”

  “You’re right, I’ll do that. Thanks.”

  “I know,” Julio said. “You’ve had a lot on your mind.”

  The gate guard recognized the car of course but it didn’t cause him visibly to relax; he wasn’t paid to take things for granted. Julio rolled the window down and the guard stooped to search their faces. No words were exchanged. The guard merely retreated to his post out of the rain. There was the noise of electric motors, gears gnashing; the iron gates swung open with stately slow ease and Julio steered the stocky car through them, up the winding drive amid oleanders and bougainvillea, palms and cacti, the oversized rock garden that served, as if by coincidence, to screen the house from the view of anyone on the landward side of it. A man in a gray uniform and black Sam Browne was walking two Dobermans on leashes. He watched the car go by and dipped his head an inch and a half to Julio, who said, “You’d think the old man was already in Batista’s palace.”

  “He never will be,” Cielo said.

  “You think we should tell him that, don’t you.”

  “Somebody ought to.”

  “He wouldn’t listen.”

  Cielo got out of the car and looked up at the house. It wasn’t excessive or even prepossessing; whitewashed stucco, curved red tiles on the low roof.

  The old man came out to meet them. Julio opened the deck lid and the three of them contemplated the money. The old man opened one of the sacks and fingered a few banknotes. Then his eyes flicked at Cielo like a lizard’s tongue. “Well done.” Then he turned away—he’d seen money before, “Come inside. Have you had breakfast?”

  They ate on the terrace overlooking the sea. The veranda roof and the screen kept the rain out. The breakfast came in courses; with rigid Old World courtesy the old man refrained from discussing affairs of importance until the dishes had been cleared away and the second coffees served.

  The old man, Jorge Felipe Vandermeer Draga-Ruiz, was a sly figure, full of calculation and insinuation. He was gaunt and had once been quite tall; now he stooped. The backs of his hands were flecked with cyanotic age spots and his flesh hung a little loose. His hair was a bit thin but hadn’t receded and he kept it dyed black. He had a ropy chicken neck and a querulous way of thrusting his jaw forward and chewing on his teeth. An engaging grin and an archaic manner of gallantry; pride, and a capacity for cruelty, and the vanity o
f polished shoes and good clothes and cared-for fingernails.

  “It was Emil who disrupted the plan? Tell me the truth.”

  “It was Emil.”

  The old man snarled. “What, have the termites got at his brain?”

  A woman with a well-developed mustache came out of the house with a pot of coffee and warmed their cups. Cielo had never seen her before; the old man had a staff as big as a hotel’s. Three quarters of the house was underground, buried back in the cliff, and there were coach houses and servants’ quarters scattered around the property—the place was like an iceberg, you didn’t see much but there was a lot of it.

  When the woman departed Julio said, “A man who disobeys one order will disobey another.” He stared at the old man contentiously.

  “This isn’t the Wehrmacht,” Cielo said, trying to placate them. “And Emil, Jr., didn’t train with us. He’s young.”

  “What you’re saying is it’s my fault this happened. I saddled you with him. Well I thought he might learn something about manhood from you. I meant you no disservice.”

  “The American’s dead,” Cielo put in. “Whipping Emil won’t revise that.”

  “Whipping,” the old man said, “doesn’t come into it. No one is going to whip Emil.”

  Julio stroked his bandit’s mustache and watched Cielo ingenuously, eyes like black olives. Abruptly and brashly Julio said, “If we punish him we make him our enemy, he’ll come at our kidneys one night with a knife. But if we don’t punish him we’ll only encourage his contempt for what he believes is our weakness. Either way he’ll betray us sooner or later. I don’t give a damn whose blood relation he is.” And his eyes rolled back to the old man again.

  Cielo sucked in his breath. It wasn’t the proper time for such a confrontation.

  The old man took it calmly enough. “What, did you expect we could retake Havana without firing a shot? Don’t tell me after all the blood that’s been shed you’re turning into mangy intellectuals, you two. Pacifists, is it?”