Black Pomegranate

by David W. Cowles

  The reaction was immediate. Toro dropped the glass, then fell to the floor in a stupor, ugly gurgling noises emanating from his throat. Cat and I watched him writhe convulsively, hideously, grotesquely, gruesomely, his muscles in clonic spasms, alternately tensed and twisted, then flaccid. Cyanosis turned his lips and fingers blue. His hemorrhaging eyes bulged sightlessly. Thick blood spurted from his nose and oozed from his ears. Vomit poured from his mouth, and he urinated and defecated on himself. It was over very quickly. In less than a minute, Cesar Toro was a fresh corpse, still twitching with after-death paroxysms.

  Catarina was jumping up and down with glee. I was in a state of total shock.

  “Ohmigod, Cat, what happened?”

  “It worked! It worked! It worked!”

  “What worked?”

  “Do you remember the time we went to Riverside and picked castor beans and I told you I was going to make some ricin? Well, it worked!”

  “Are you saying Toro was poisoned? How?”

  “The ricin was in the champagne Miguel brought in. Just a teeny-weeny little bit. That’s all it took. Toro’s blood coagulated almost instantly. Simultaneously, he suffered a stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, and complete loss of his circulatory system. He also shit in his pants.”

  Someone else was at the door, rapping insistently. “That will be Miguel, back to see if we’re all right,” Catarina supposed.

  But it wasn’t Miguel. It was Heidi and Dean Martin.

  “Ohmigod! Who’s he?” Martin, awestruck, gaped at the dead man.

  “His name was Cesar Toro,” I replied. “He’s dead.”

  “I can see that. Did you kill him, Hobson?”

  “No. You might say that Toro killed himself—though he didn’t know he was going to do so. It’s no great loss. He was a very evil, despicable man.”

  “We’d better call the police,” Martin said, reaching for the telephone.

  Heidi stopped him. “No, Luther, put the phone down. It’s none of our business. Let Hobson and Catarina handle things. It’s their room. If they want to kill someone in it, it’s their prerogative.”

  Another knock on the door. Miguel had returned. He was flanked by Pablo and Pietro.

  “This room is getting to be more crowded than a Mexican bus station on payday. Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” Martin wailed.

  I decided Dean Martin deserved an explanation. “I don’t know the entire litany of details, but I can start. This afternoon, I met with Catarina’s uncle, Carlos Perez, at the cemetery where his wife is buried.

  “When Carlos and I finished our talk, Toro was waiting outside the cemetery gate in a limousine. He offered me a ride back to the hotel. I didn’t know who Toro was at the time. I thought he was just a limo driver looking for a fare.

  “Once we were on the road, something about the man made my skin crawl. I began to worry, thinking he might take me to an isolated place to rob and murder me. But, nothing happened. He brought me directly back to the hotel, and I concluded my imagination had been running amok.”

  Pablo continued the saga. “Toro did not harm you during the limousine ride, Alfredo, because he needed you alive. He knew you would lead him to Catarina.

  “I was also at the cemetery, hiding behind the bronze statue of Emilio Salmagundi, the revered founder of Granada Negra. I recognized Toro immediately and realized there was trouble ahead. It’s a good thing Pietro and I carry cell phones. I called Pietro and set a plan in motion.”

  Pietro took over. “After dropping you off in front of the hotel, Toro parked his limousine, then walked into the hotel lobby and skulked around. When the desk clerk left his post for a few minutes, Toro ran behind the counter, looked up your room number in the computer, and headed directly for the elevators.

  “In the meantime, Miguel—who had just arrived in Granada Negra—was preparing a little surprise for Señor Toro.”

  Catarina picked up the story. “Toro burst in here and held us at gunpoint. We didn’t know what to do.”

  Miguel spoke next. “That’s when I brought the poisoned champagne. I was hoping you wouldn’t give me away. I was very worried one of you might drink some of the champagne, but there was no way I could warn you the champagne was intended for Toro.”

  “There was no need for you to worry,” Cat told him. “We would never drink a toast to Pancho Villa.”

  “What kind of poison was it?” Heidi asked. “It must be terribly deadly.”

  “It is,” I grinned. “It’s called ricin. Ricin’s one of the most toxic substances in the world. Catarina made it herself. From castor beans. At Timberline College, in her chemistry class.”

  “Holy shit,” Martin wailed. “The college could be sued!”

  “You’ve had the poison with you all this time?” Heidi asked. Fascination filled her face.

  “Not all the time,” Cat answered nonchalantly. “I turned the vial over to Miguel when we were at papa’s hacienda.”

  “How are we going to dispose of Toro’s body?” I fretted. “We can’t leave him in the room. He’s already starting to smell.”

  “Don’t worry, Alfredo. The cleaners will be here soon,” Miguel stated.

  Heidi was alarmed. “Do you mean the housekeepers? The cleaning ladies? They might call the police.”

  Miguel laughed. “No. Not the cleaning ladies. The cleaners. Men who get rid of homicide victims without leaving any traces for the police to find. It’s a noble profession.”

  “I never heard of such a profession,” Cat commented, her jaw ajar. “How did you learn about it, my little brother?”

  “I watch mucho American cinema.”

  “And where does one find these ‘cleaners’? Are they listed in the Granada Negra Yellow Pages?”

  There was no need for Miguel to answer. The cleaners were at the door. Red and Muscles.

  Twenty-Nine

  The Banquet

  ON NEW YEAR’S DAY, the day set for Pancho Villa’s inauguration, Catarina felicitously forwent her masculine façade and dressed in a floor-length, pink silk brocade, fairy-tale-princess gown studded with genuine cultured pearls and pomegranate-color garnets.

  Cat bought me a white tuxedo at Sacos Avenida Cinco in downtown Grenadina. With it, I wore a pink bow tie and cummerbund to match Cat’s gown. Heidi and Luther were also in formal attire.

  We chartered a pomegranate-purple stretch limousine and fetched Uncle Carlos from his villa before proceeding to the presidential palace, where the inaugural dinner and ball was to be held for a thousand invited guests. Carlos wore a full-dress military style uniform, replete with a chest full of medals and campaign ribbons.

  “I didn’t know you were in the army,” I commented.

  “I wasn’t, and I’m not,” he replied.

  “Then, why the uniform and all the decorations?”

  Carlos sighed. “It’s a shame you never got to meet my wife, Alfredo.”

  “Your wife wasn’t named Alfredo, Uncle Carlos,” Catarina interjected. “Her name was Tina.”

  “You’re quite right,” Carlos agreed. “Tina was a real—how do you say, it?—pistola. I used to say—not to her face, of course—that Tina had enough mouth for an extra set of teeth. That woman’s tongue was so sharp she didn’t need a steak knife. She would have made a magnificent tabloid talk show hostess,” he wistfully reminisced.

  “Presidente Perez, my steamed brother, awarded me these mettles and ribbons for surviving Tina’s little fits of temperature.”

  What a great idea, I thought. How many other henpecked husbands were equally worthy of medals for surviving decades of a feckless marriage, yet remained unrecognized.

  “Regardless, I loved Tina dearly, and every day I mourn her timely passing,” Carlos sniffled sentimentally, his eyes moist.

  I had to change the subject. Carlos was becoming much too maudlin for so early in the day. I suspected he’d already had more than a nip of pomegranate wine.

  “I wonder what Pancho Vi
lla thought when he received his little present?” I asked, to no one in particular.

  Catarina giggled. “The remains to be seen?” she punned. “I wish I could have been a teeny-weeny little mouse watching when Villa went into his bathroom and found Toro’s corpse sitting on the toilet.”

  I shuddered at the macabre mind-picture Cat had painted. “I bet General Villa is climbing the walls. His number one henchman Cesar Toro is dead, and Villa doesn’t have any idea who killed him or how the man’s body was smuggled past the palace guards and into his boudoir. For all Villa knows, his name could be next on someone’s hit list.

  “It seems to me Villa’s biggest mistake—please forgive my slightly skewed metaphor—was that he jumped the gun before all of his ducks were lined up. It must terrify him to know your father is still alive and could swoop down at any time, like an eagle on a rodent. There. That simile’s more appropriate.

  “Moreover, Villa needs us to be at the inauguration, to appear to vouch for him, but he must be deathly afraid of what we might say or do. And—with us arriving at the presidential palace at the last possible minute, a thousand witnesses to view our entry—not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who will be watching on television—he wouldn’t dare do a damn thing to us.”

  “It was very presumptuous of General Villa to occupy my father’s home,” Cat spat angrily. “Now, we’ll need to have the entire building fumigated before we move back in.”

  The Granada Negra presidential palace was an imposing stone structure with ribbed vaulting, flying buttresses, domed towers, pointed arches, and a steep, high roof. The Gothic architectural style seemed more appropriate for a cathedral than a center of government and residence of the country’s first-in-command.

  The building was surrounded by acres of immaculately manicured lawns dotted with assorted varieties of palms, wispy jacaranda trees covered with lavender flowers, and colorfully-blossomed hibiscus plants. A twelve-foot-high wrought-iron fence, identical to the one at the cemetery, enclosed the property. Immediately inside the fence, pomegranate bushes loaded with deep red globes of fruit were pruned into a hedge, to provide a modicum of privacy from the stares of passersby.

  “The palace is really quite cozy inside,” Catarina told me. “You’ll like living here, Alfredo.”

  I didn’t see how any place that contained a dining room capable of seating a thousand people for dinner could be considered cozy, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

  Our limousine was cleared past the guard shack and onto the palace grounds. We then traveled slowly up a long cobblestone driveway and stopped in front of the main entrance to the palace. Two soldiers in passionate purple uniforms took us inside and escorted us to the dais.

  The high-ceilinged banquet hall, coffered in six gilded tiers, was decorated with purple and white balloons and festooned with crepe paper streamers. The air was filled with festivity. Guests milled about, munching hot and cold hors d’oeuvres and drinking pomegranate wine.

  As we had planned, we were the last guests to arrive. General Villa was waiting impatiently at the long, linen-covered head table. He nervously checked his watch, apparently wondering when or even if we would show up. The general breathed an immense and audible sigh of relief when he spotted us.

  I was taken aback by Villa’s appearance. He looked exactly like a combination of Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro. In other words, Villa and Uncle Carlos were dead ringers for each other.

  Cat had once explained to me that in the early days, the country was sparsely populated and the lack of roads made it difficult for the peasants to get about. Thus, there was a paucity of potential marriage partners. As a result, any concerns about incest were ignored and before long most everyone in the country was related to everyone else in one way or another.

  “We have a saying in Granada Negra,” Cat had said. “Incest is like nepotism. They’re both okay as long as they’re kept in the family.”

  I would have to remember to ask Cat how Villa was related to Carlos. That might help explain why President Perez had kept Villa on as general of the army, despite dire warnings of the man’s duplicity.

  Villa greeted us warmly, with bear hugs, handshakes, and kisses on the cheeks. But his eyes were stone hard and as cold as Fargo, North Dakota in the dead of winter. His palsied hands trembled uncontrollably.

  Cat, Carlos, and I were seated immediately to Villa’s right. His mistress of the moment was to his left, her plump posterior popping out of a too-skimpy and too-tight fire-engine-red taffeta dress. And, next to her, sat Heidi and Luther. As the crowd quieted down and the invited guests took their places, uniformed waiters poured champagne in everyone’s glasses.

  “Is it safe to drink this?” I whispered apprehensively to Cat.

  “Yes. I’m absolutely certain. Didn’t you notice our waiter?”

  I hadn’t, but stole a furtive glance at the next opportunity. It was Miguel, behind the fake mustache Cat had worn when she masqueraded as a man.

  I was aghast. “Is Villa going to be poisoned?” I whispered again.

  Cat smiled knowingly. “No. There will be no need. He will destroy himself.”

  “What did Villa whisper in your ear a few minutes ago?” I whispered once more.

  “He said he is wearing a brand-new uniform,” Cat whispered back.

  “Why on earth would he bother to tell you that?”

  “Blood stains are very difficult to remove. Villa said twenty expert riflemen have their weapons trained on us and asked me not to do anything that would cause them to fire. He does not want his new uniform to be splattered with our blood.”

  “Ohmigod.”

  Catarina took my chin in her hand, leaned over, and brought her eyes close to mine. “Do not worry, my love. Nothing bad will happen to any of us. I’m absolutely certain.”

  Despite the coded words, I was not so sure.

  Villa rose, his champagne glass in his hand, and leaned his weight on the podium. “On this auspicious occasion, I would like to offer a toast to Señorita Catarina Perez Valdez, the daughter of the late presidente of Granada Negra, Mario Perez. Unfortunately, Mario cannot be here with us tonight because of a prior commitment.”

  “Señorita Perez is accompanied by her betrothed, Señor Alfredo Hobson, and her distinguished uncle, Señor Carlos Perez.” The audience provided an enthusiastic round of applause.

  “On the left is my friend, confidante, and aerobics instructor, the former Miss Granada Negra, Señorita Carmine Arenque!”

  The band played a fanfare, followed by a few bars of The Lady is a Tramp. Arenque stood, shook her torso Charro-style, and waved to the audience. Another round of applause, a few whistles.

  “And last, but not least. Seated next to Señorita Arenque are two special guests who have traveled to Granada Negra all the way from Timberline College, the premier educational institution in the great and exalted United States of America. Allow me, please, to present Miss Heidi Hazelhorst and Dean Luther Martin!” More applause.

  Villa waited for the audience to quiet down. “I have good news and good news for all of you. Which would you like to hear first?” he prompted enthusiastically.

  “Give us the good news first,” the crowd roared in unison, as if rehearsed.

  “I am going to be your new presidente!” Villa bellowed.

  Absolute silence.

  Before Villa had time to become embarrassed, a ten-foot high wooden door noisily squeaked open at the rear of the hall, and all heads turned. A soldier entered, followed by a color guard. He half-stepped toward our table to the rat-a-tat-tat of a single drum. Slowly, methodically. In his arms he carried a silver tray covered by a domed lid—very carefully, as if the tray contained a soufflé that might fall or a bomb that would explode if not handled with the utmost caution. Thick tension filled the room.

  Villa waited until the soldier reached the dais. “And now for more good news,” he exclaimed exuberantly. “As you all know, no presidente of Granada Negra can be sw
orn in without holding in his hand the Granada Negra, the majestic symbol of our sovereign nation, while he takes the oath of office. We had feared the giant jewel, which had been stolen by the revolutionaries, had been lost forever. But, miraculously, here it is!”

  With a flourish, Villa raised the domed lid from the tray, to reveal a dark red, almost black, highly polished pomegranate-shaped object. As he did so, a military band played the first chords of the Granada Negra national anthem. Instantly, the crowd leapt to its feet, yelling and cheering and stomping and applauding. They finally settled down ten minutes later, long after the last notes of the anthem had faded away.

  Villa picked up a hand microphone and resumed his speech. “It is tradition in our country for the outgoing presidente to hand the Granada Negra to the incoming presidente.” Tears flowed from his eyes. “But Mario Perez is dead, long live el presidente.”

  The general wiped his blubbering face with his sleeve, revealing an enormous smile that had been hiding beneath the chagrin on his countenance. “In a display of national unity, Señorita Catarina Perez Valdez has grudgingly—uh, I mean, graciously, consented to stand in her late father’s shoes. Figuratively speaking, of course.

  “Catarina, my dearest, would you please take the Granada Negra from the soldier’s tray and place it in my hands?” Villa requested unctuously.

  Catarina rose. Hesitantly, perhaps even reverently, she reached for the treasured national symbol and held it up for all to see. Then, as if pitching the deciding game in the World Series, Cat grabbed her crotch, spat on the floor, raised one leg, reached back, wound up, and hurled the Granada Negra with all of her strength, DASHING IT AGAINST THE STONE WALL!

  As the object burst into a thousand shards, the dumbfounded audience gaped and gasped in horror. Villa became apoplectic with rage. I expected his firing squad to mow us down at any moment. But it didn’t. Apparently, I thought at the time, the soldiers were in such a state of shock they were unable to do anything but stare and wait to see what was going to happen next.