Gone Bamboo

by Anthony Bourdain

  "They have a prior business relationship," said Monsieur Ribiere, driving his ball sideways into the brush. "Merde." He put down another ball and kicked it onto the fairway. "I suggested that, as they are neighbors, he have a discreet word with the gentleman. Straighten out any misunderstandings."

  "Oh, I don't like that."

  "It was a bad surprise, this Iannello, this Wagons coming here."

  "I can imagine."

  "My man will be discreet."

  "I hope so. I really do. You trust him to behave? I can see considerable potential for blowback here. This Denard... he did some things" - the man smiled wryly - "He did some things a while back for us, didn't he? A liaison thing. I mean, I seem to remember—"

  "There's nothing in the files," Monsieur Ribiere assured him. "It was our operation, always. If there was some mutual interest. . ."

  "You trust the guy."

  "I trust him."

  "Okay. I'll rely on your take on the situation. What do you want me to do? They need some kind of an answer."

  "What are my choices?"

  "I can treat them like mushrooms over at Justice; that's option one: keep them in the dark and feed them shit. They generally don't like when we do that. Somebody always ends up going and crying to Congress or whispering to the press. Option two: I can jerk them around for a while, dribble out a few uninteresting tid-bits a page at a time. Bore them into submission. Option three: I can give them chapter and verse and see what happens. Just throw a classified slug on the memo, tell them it will compromise Liaison Agreements with a Friendly Unnamed Power. That'll keep them quiet for a while, but . . ."

  Monsieur Ribiere screwed up his face into a look of utter skepticism.

  "I take it you don't like option three. Probably right."

  "My friend has a long and distinguished history of service. It would be unfortunate . . . unfortunate for us both, if the past were to be dragged up and examined."

  "Say no more." The man sighed. He was, apparently, not entirely unused to being blackmailed before breakfast. He took a vicious swing at his ball, missing it completely. "Fuck."

  "For him, for me . . . even for you . . . it would be bad."

  "Hey, buddy. I got it. You don't have to lay it on so thick. A little subtlety, please." He clapped an arm around Monsieur Ribiere's bony shoulders. "God, I love this," he said, startling Ribiere. He picked up his ball and headed back to the clubhouse, his club over his shoulder like a baseball bat. A few early-bird golfers were beginning to appear at the first tee, a jumble of brightly colored fat men disgorged from golf carts. Ribiere walked slowly in the opposite direction, Trung following at a respectful distance.

  19

  The giant underbelly of American Airlines Flight 557 from New York, landing gear down, dropped out of the clouds over Simpson Bay Beach, covering the horrified weekend tourists below with a fine mist of jet fuel. The end of the runway for Juliana Airport, to the tourists' surprise, lay only a hundred yards beyond the tree line, and the hapless beachgoers could hear the squealing tires and the roar of the air brakes as the big airbus touched down, the exhaust from three Rolls-Royce jet engines kicking up sand and curling over beach blankets.

  Passenger Kevin Aloysius Coonan, in khaki SanSabelt slacks, a stiff Johnny Carson button-down dress shirt fresh from its wrapping, and a pair of Korean-made moccasins, stepped onto the hot tarmac. He carried a wilted blue blazer over one arm; in the other, he held a cracked leather carry-on containing toothbrush, disposable razors, some balled up white tube socks, a copy of Sports Illustrated, and a bottle of Jameson whiskey. Everything else, Kevin figured he could buy on the island.

  He could hardly breathe. Sweat ran into his eyes behind the blue-framed aviator sunglasses that threatened to slide off his nose at any second. He took his place in the line of restive new arrivals waiting at passport control, wedged between two corpulent retirees in new vacation outfits. The man on his right had a skin condition, the pale white turkey wattle under his neck becoming red and blotchy as the line moved slowly forward in the sweltering hallway. Kevin tried to shrink back from the man, afraid of catching something, in near despair at the way he was scratching the skin now, little white flakes dropping onto his shirtfront. By the time Kevin reached the immigration shed, the man's face was affected, fiery welts creeping up into his cheeks, his wife, an even larger blob of flesh with a slash of fire-engine red lispstick misapplied diagonally across her lips, was saying, "Don't scratch! Don't scratch. It'll make it worse."

  Kevin didn't feel too good himself. The flight down had been torment. He'd denied himself drinks since he'd be meeting his contact in the arrivals lounge, and the talkative crone in the seat next to him had smelled like the conga line at Century Village, all perfume, urine, and spite. She'd polished off six or seven gin and tonics, the tiny bottles forming a neat row on her tray, all the while railing about that damn Rooosevelt and the conversion from the gold standard. Roosevelt was a Jew, she confided, after her third gin, lowering her voice and moving in close so Kevin could smell the tartar on her teeth. He had suffered his deprivation badly, focusing on the woman's wig, the way it seemed to move independently of her head when she turned, staring at the frightening copper-colored hairpiece like it was some lurid religious icon, willing her to die right there so she'd leave him alone.

  The in-flight movie had been Harry and the Hendersons. From what Kevin had been able to gather from the soundless movements of its characters, it was about some cute little kids and an adorable Bigfoot who moves in with them. Kevin had found himself wondering where the hairy, pantless giant's sexual organs were concealed, and where the beast went to take a dump. One of those photogenic little tykes stepped into a pile of yeti shit, he had thought, and it would have been a different movie altogether. He might have sprung for the headset to see that.

  He got his passport stamped and wandered about in the arrivals lounge until Little Petey found him.

  Little Petey was not little. The man who nodded at Kevin from the sliding doors by the taxi stands was of more than average height, big chested, with his black hair swept back tightly into a stylish little rattail, which hung over the collar of his silk shirt. He was thirtyish, tan, and comfortable looking in summer-weight chamois pants, sandals, two-toned orange aviators with the name of a sports car written in tiny letters on the frames. He looked like a vacationing movie producer, or a retired fireman who'd hit Lotto. Kevin hated him on sight.

  "Car's over there," said Little Petey, not shaking Kevin's hand. He led Kevin across a shadeless parking lot, completely unconcerned, like he was taking him to see some time-shares, his gait lazy and carefree, the bulge of a handgun under his waistband the only indication of his true associations.

  "It's a rental," said Little Petey, not so apologetically, swinging behind the wheel of a white Hyundai jeep. "You need a fuckin' tank to drive down here. The jigs, they can't drive, an' the roads . . . forget about . . . you lucky if there is one." He ground the gears for a while, lurching and stalling and starting up again until he found reverse. The roof was down, and Kevin thought that if he didn't get some air-conditioning soon, or at least a breeze, his brain was going to boil over and start bubbling out his ears. When at long last Little Petey successfully shifted into first, and then second, Kevin had sweat right through his shirt.

  "Car I been drivin's back at the casino," said Little Petey, one arm outside the door, tapping out a beat to a reggae tune on the radio. "Guy who runs the place didn't think it was a good idea you stayin' there. He's got his own thing down here, and he didn't want no complications."

  Kevin's imagined hotel room - air-conditioning, fresh sheets, swimming pool, tall blender drinks, and steel band - evaporated.

  "How 'bout a beach where I'm stayin'? Place got a beach?"

  "Well," said Little Petey, smiling good-naturedly, "the place we goin' is like a hunnert, two hunnert yards . . . maybe half a mile from the water. You can walk there no problem. It's nice."

  "And where you
stayin'?"

  "Uh . . . I stay at the casino," said Little Petey.

  Kevin sank in his seat, leaning against the window frame, grateful at least for the wind as the jeep picked up speed. They passed a Kentucky Fried Chicken, a Burger King, a Subway, then turned up a steep, winding mountain road, where they ran into traffic. A few wiry black youths whipped by them on scooters.

  "Nice view, huh?" said Little Petey when they reached the top. Below them, the French lowlands, a narrow squiggle of sand and trees, snaked around a giant inner lagoon, the red tile roofs of vacation homes peeking through the green.

  "A bar," said Kevin. "This place have a bar?"

  "Oh, yeah. This place got a bar. Broads . . . all the broads you want. They got a string a' hooers workin' outta this place. I'm tellin' you, you'll love it. This guy runs the place, Dominican guy? Brings the hooers in in fuckin' cargo containers." He started to laugh. "This guy was tellin' me . . . last year, they sent in a load onna boat, right? So they get the container in, only nobody tells the guy it's there. Three days later somebody finally gets aroun' to callin' this guy an' says you got a cargo container down here onna docks, come an' pick it up. So he goes down the docks and cracks the thing open, and there's nothin' in there but a pile a' dead hooers. They been sittin' inside that thing for . . . for days, and they like started to cook in there. By the time he opens the thing up, they look like a pile a' boiled shrimp."

  "What about the guns?" asked Kevin.

  "They gonna be here in a few days. No problem there. That's all handled. Everything you need. I got that under control per­sonally."

  "The vans."

  "They're up there already. I got a garage behind the place you stayin' at. They in there. And the others, the kids you gonna need, they'll be by in a few days too. Tough little bastards, perfect for what you wanna do. They'll go chargin' right in the front door that what you want. They're happy for the work, believe me."

  So am I, thought Kevin. Happy for the work. He unbuttoned his shirt, feeling a little better now. "They any good?" he asked.

  "How good they gotta be?" said Little Petey.

  Kevin shrugged.

  "They'll do fine," said Little Petey. "They don't know nothin' . . . they figger it's a drug thing. The guy owes money, we told 'em. They unnerstand that. Pisses 'em off on principle, some rich guy doesn't pay what he owes. Where these guys come from you do that, they come and saw yer fuckin' legs off. You see that movie? Al Pacino? T wanchoo to meet my li' frien'.'" Little Petey laughed uproariously. "I love that pitcher."

  "You payin' these kids?"

  "Sure. Peanuts, but we payin' 'em. That's the beauty part. These guys are right outta the fuckin' trees. Show one a' these animals a fuckin' Uzi, he'll come in his pants an' be yer best friend for life. They'd do it for the guns, I axed 'em to. This one kid, he shows me this clapped-out fuckin' Smith, musta been twenny years old, you . . . you wouldn't think the thing had ever been fired. This kid's so proud of this gun. He waves it aroun' in fronta my face an' tells me how many mean hombres he's put inna ground with this thing, what a bad dude he is. You'll see. They're gonna be fine. They just gotta get you in there anyways, right? I mean, they don't come out again it's no skin off my ass."

  As they descended the mountain road approaching Philipsburg, Kevin saw a row of beachfront hotels and casinos. Beyond them, in the Great Bay, two cruise ships dispatched ferry loads of bargain hunters to the duty-free shops in town. Kevin found himself again yearning for a pina colada in a cavernous, air-conditioned necropolis, an anonymous, sterile room with a paper strip across the toilet bowl and crinkly waxed paper covering the water glasses.

  But Little Petey took a hard left turn away from the town, past the Great Salt Pond, a charitably named stagnant lake of foul-smelling brown water, and back into the mountains. The landscaped condominiums and newer villas gave way gradually to ugly, unpainted cinder-block motels, wooden shacks that sold lottery tickets, a few smoky roadside barbecue joints, and shantylike homes, built haphazardly on the hillsides.

  "You hungry?" asked Little Petey. "You want some ribs or somethin'?"

  "No. Thanks same," said Kevin. "I jus' wanna lay down, maybe have a nice drink or two. I'll look around a little bit later, get the lay of things."

  "You'll get the lay a' things all right where you goin'," said Little Petey. "I can promise you. This a regular pussy palace."

  "I wouldn't be stayin' in a whorehouse, would I, Petey?" said Kevin. "This is a hotel we're goin' to?"

  "What can I say?" said Little Petey, slapping Kevin on the back in a friendly way. "People stay there. It's a whorehouse, but it's a hotel. Don't worry. They gonna take real good care a' you there. They keep their mouth shut an' they take care a' our friends. It's nice. You'll see. We almost there."

  "Jayzuss," muttered Kevin.

  They turned onto a dirt road, more like a dry riverbed, the jeep bouncing over exposed roots and large stones broken loose from a crumbling, weed-covered wall on one side. In a cloud of choking dust, Little Petey navigated between the rocks and wall and a deep drainage ditch, past a run-down plantation house with a rusting pickup on blocks in the front yard, a few goats picking over a discarded bag of potato chips. They passed a few low wood and plaster sheds with beer signs out front and cars parked under the trees in their backyards.

  "The competition," said Little Petey.

  A few locals, walking single file at the edge of the road, didn't even look up as they roared past them, leaving them in a cloud of dust.

  La Ronda was by no stretch of the imagination a hotel. Kevin could see that before they'd even pulled up into the trash-strewn parking lot. It was a large, ramshackle structure, three stories high with precariously sagging balconies built around the upper floors. The first floor was stone and beams and might once have been a respectable structure. But first one, then another, then many more annexes had been added on haphazardly, cheap plywood and sheet metal, cobbled together into a top-heavy junk pile of small cubicles, all connected by inner and outer walkways. A single neon sign advertised Presidente beer from behind a dirt-smeared window. Curling political posters urging the reader to Vote for Rudy papered the front on both sides of the entrance. Upstairs, sheets and pillowcases hung from a network of clothes-lines. Somewhere a dog was barking to get out. Kevin saw a few empty taxis parked in the lot, back from the road, and a moldering pile of cardboard beer cases stacked against the wall, reaching to the second floor.

  "Taxi drivers like this place for a little love in the afternoon," Little Petey chortled, trying to put a good face on things. Kevin didn't want to get out of the car. He'd thought this trip would be an escape from the squalor of his recent circumstances. This was even worse.

  "This is crap," said Kevin.

  "Don't knock it," said Little Petey. "It's safe. Nobody's gonna see you here. You can do anything you want . . . Someplace else, you got yer marshals, you got your cops, DEA, all sorts a' snitches and scumbags you don't want pokin' their nose in . . . I mean, this is business, right? Come on, man, it ain't so bad. Give it a fuckin' chance. I'll buy ya a drink, introduce you to Ruben."

  Now even a drink would be a blessing, Kevin decided. He got out of the car, took his bag and jacket, and followed Little Petey into the front entrance to La Ronda, the familiar smell of spilled beer making the ugliness recede as he got closer to his first drink in over twelve hours.

  The main bar was a large, wood-paneled room, decorated by beer advertisements of buxom, Spanish-looking women in skimpy bathing suits. A warped pool table occupied the center of the room, where a gold-toothed Dominican with tattooed hands was struggling to sink the eight ball while a fleshy whore jerked him off through his open fly. The Dominican was drunk. He kept swatting at a nonexistent insect on his nose, rubbing his face and eyes with one hand while the whore continued valiantly to maintain his apparently uncooperative erection. Every few seconds the man would return his attention to his cue stick, trying to focus on the ball, dangerously on the verge of fal
ling over. When he scratched on the eight, he staggered off into a back room, the whore still alongside, half-carrying him with one arm, the other pumping determinedly away inside his pants.

  "Nice, high-class joint," said Kevin, bellying up to the bar.

  "Whatya havin', Kev'?" asked Little Petey.

  "Beer," said Kevin, licking his dry lips.

  A dark woman with a flat nose and earrings the size of door knockers opened two Presidentes for them. "Bunny, this is my friend Mr Smith," said Little Petey. "This here's Bunny. She's Mrs Ruben. Where's Ruben at, sweetheart?"

  "He coming now," said Bunny. "This your frien' Meester Smeet who wanna room?"

  "Si," said Little Petey. "The very one. This the man who gonna stay here for a while. You look after him real good. This a good friend a' mine. Anything he wants, you make sure he gets it."

  Kevin drained off half his beer in one gulp and then finished it with another. He ordered a second. A short, balding man with a big grin and a heavy gold cuff on his wrist came down the stairs, counting a stack of aged singles. Seeing Little Petey, he straightened up and came immediately over, an expansive air of self-importance in his walk.

  "Meester Petey. So good you are with us again. An' this is your friend? The Sefior Smeet you spoke of? It is so excellent to make your acquaintance please," he said, pumping Kevin's hand vigorously. "You are most welcome to my home please. You are drinking? Yes. Anything I can do? You justa ask me. I have a room, the best. Is ready now. I take your bag, Sefior Smeet? Here. Please."

  Ruben gestured to a bored-looking teenager who was watching cartoons on TV from a broken couch in the corner. The young man came over, took Kevin's bag, and loped upstairs, squeezing past a trio of drunken taxi drivers coming down at the same time.

  "I do what you do, you know," said Little Petey, feeling chatty after a couple of drinks. "Or, I did, anyways. I'm like semiretired now. You'll like it down here, really. It's nice."