by Blake Banner
“It’s my excuse for chilling on a tropical beach. What’s yours?”
“I don’t got one.” He smiled. “I don’t need one. I got Paradise Island, I got my best girl—” He gestured at Maria and I watched her cringe and try to hide it. He went on, apparently unaware. “I got my interest in a few local business…” He spread his hands. “This is like my little paradise kingdom. I don’t need no excuse.”
I raised my glass to him. “Long live the king.” He made an elaborately gracious gesture back and we drank. “A genuine, young entrepreneur.” I set my glass on the table and directed my gaze at Helen while I went on. “I tell you, it takes a lot of balls to be an entrepreneur in this world. People out to get you at every turn. Hat’s off to you, pal.”
He pulled a packet of Lucky Strikes from his jacket pocket and showed the packet around. Everyone shook their head, so he pulled one loose and poked it in his mouth. He made a noise like, “Mh!”, pointed at me and leaned into the flame of a Cartier lighter. He inhaled deep and spoke as he blew smoke at the ceiling. “Why don’t you tell us about your book? What kind of book you’re writing?”
“Oh,” I shrugged, “I’m in it for the money. For me, it’s all about the money.” I saw Helen glance at me, and went on. “So I figure a thriller, murder, corruption, sex, infidelity, betrayal, all set in a perfect paradise of transparent turquoise beaches, palm trees, coconuts and pineapples. I figure I got me a winner.”
They laughed politely, but he became serious. “I like to read a good thriller, Dave, and you know what? Maybe I can put you in touch with some people I know in Cali, ’coz, once you’ve written the damn thing then you wanna fockin’ publish it, right?”
“I do.”
“Right? But, you know what I am always lookin’ for in a thriller? Realism. I wanna feel like the writer was really fockin’ there. He saw it, maybe he even did it. You know what I’m sayin’? He knows what it’s like to have the bullets poppin’ in the air around his head. He knows that burnin’, raw hollow in his gut just before…”
Helen cut him short. “Dave was in the Royal Marines, in the Gulf and in Afghanistan. He knows all about popping and burning.”
He looked genuinely surprised. “Oh, man, you done that shit?”
“Yeah, but look, it was just a job.”
Suddenly his attitude had changed and he was pointing at me and talking to Maria. “See? See that? This is the real deal, cariño. Is what I’m talking about. Some half-ass punk is gonna tell you, ‘Oh yeah man, I was on this operation and that operation and we killed so many Arab hijos de puta…’ But the real deal? What does he tell you? What did he just tell you? What did he say?”
He stared at her, waiting for her to answer. I wondered how she was going to react. She looked suddenly mad and raised her eyebrows high. “Seriously? You want me to repeat what he said five seconds ago?”
“Come on, Maria! What did he say?”
I shifted my gaze to Helen. She was watching me. Maria said, “We all heard what he said, Gonzalo!”
Gonzalo held up both hands, his cigarette perched between two fingers. “He said, ‘Yeah, but look, it was just a job!’”
“I know! We all heard it!”
“But cariño, you know what that is? That is….” He stabbed his finger at his heart. “That is courage! That is heart, that is a real guy.”
Maria had stopped listening to him, but he wasn’t even aware of her anymore. He leaned forward and held out his drink to me. We toasted and drained our glasses. He refilled them again.
He started stabbing his finger at me in the air. “You gonna tell me, right, if I am wrong. There is a brotherhood…”
I heard Maria groan and tried not to smile. I nodded. He went on.
“Listen good to what I am sayin’, right? There is a brotherhood, with no name, no statutes, no terms of enactment, no AGMs, but deeper and more lasting than all the others, and this is the brotherhood of guys who have faced death, and had to fight to save their lives, and the lives of their compañeros. Am I lying to you?”
I shook my head. “No, I can’t deny that. It’s a place not many people get to see, but when you’ve seen it, it changes you.”
“See?” He turned to Helen and then Maria in turn, gesturing at me and nodding. “See? That’s what I am talkin’ about. You know what we gonna do?”
This last was directed at me. I smiled. “I have a feeling it will have something to do with booze.”
He laughed noisily, like I’d said something real funny. “You bet your ass! Finish your food and we gonna go to La Tortuga. It’s nice, you gonna like it. Drinks, girls, anything you want, my friend. Tonight is on me!”
“Anything that gets you through the night.”
“Franky baby, my dad’s hero. High five, man!”
And we did a high five. The look of disgust on Maria’s face was matched only by the one of penetrating curiosity on Helen’s. He made to stand, and as I followed suit I saw the two guys lounging by the door, smoking. They weren’t dressed in Italian silk suits. They had denim Bermudas, Havaianas, big shirts with parrots and jungles on them and tiny trilbies perched on their heads. The black one had a scraggy goatee and impenetrable shades. The white one had thin ankles and pale, flappy soles to his feet. Both of them had pieces in their waistbands under their big shirts.
We moved out through the bar. We didn’t need to elbow our way. Gonzalo had a kind of magnetic field that made people step aside as he approached. We stepped out onto the sidewalk. There were tables occupied to either side of the door, and farther down on the left, where broad steps climbed to the broad terrace, there were people sitting on the wall and on the steps. The air was alive with voices, and the moon that had risen orange was now riding high in the sky, a bright silver.
On the road there were bikes. Lots of bikes. It was like Holland. There were bikes chained to fences, chained to other bikes, leaning against walls, even creeping, like Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman disguised as a bike. But among all the bikes, dark as an unconscious drive, glinting warm amber from its dark chassis, there was a convertible BMW 8 Series parked across the way, taking up two spaces at an angle. His two boys walked up the street and climbed into a convertible Merc fifty paces away.
Gonzalo punched me on the shoulder. “Nice ride, huh? You like it?”
I smiled. It was a smile that was visible but private. I said, “I don’t like German cars. It’s a prejudice I have. My last car was a Cobra AC with seven hundred and fifty brake horsepower. She was sweet. A captain I had in the army used to say that when he retired, he’d get a ’68 Mustang and stick two electric engines in it. Silent and deadly, he said. Me? My next car, when I get back to the smoke, will be an Aston Martin DBS Superleggera. Seven hundred and fifteen brake horsepower, naught to sixty in three seconds.”
He was blinking at me. He didn’t know how to respond. I had just told him my dick was bigger than his. He was the king on this island, he had welcomed me, complimented me, paid for my meal and my booze and invited me to snort coke with him. And I had just told him my dick was bigger than his.
I gave him a big friendly grin. “I used to drive in the army. Assault and evasion techniques. Mind if I drive her to the bar?” My grin said we were just two guys talking guys’ stuff. Plus I had given him the chance to reassert his superiority and grant me a favor. He had no choice. He either had to kill me or take it. His face was conflicted, but he said, “Sure, why not? Don’t scratch her.”
He threw me the keys. I popped the trunk and threw my rucksack in. But while I was at it I took my Fairbairn & Sykes and slipped it in my boot, and popped my Sig Sauer P226 behind my back in my waistband.
He called from the back seat. “What are you doing back there, putting on your tuxedo?”
I slammed the trunk and saw Helen standing watching me. I gave an excuse for a smile and said, “I left my damn bow tie in Monaco. Let’s go.”
Helen got in the passenger seat and I got behind the wheel and fired up th
e bimmer. As soon as Helen’s door clunked, I floored the pedal and let out the clutch and we hurtled out of there kicking up dust and gravel like a bat out of hell with a red-hot pitchfork up its ass. We fishtailed round the first bend and surged down the hill toward the only asphalt road on the island, with Gonzalo laughing and saying, “Hey, dude! Chuck a left at the intersection. See if my boys can keep up!”
I made the ride exciting for them, though the route, a couple of dirt tracks and one long, straight blacktop, was not challenging. But I threw in a couple more fishtails and a couple of donuts which made Gonzalo laugh, and by the time we pulled up outside the Tortuga, out in the middle of nowhere, I was his blue-eyed boy again.
Six
The Tortuga was set back from the road about six or ten feet, flanked on both sides by dry-stone walls and rambling cacti. It was low and rustic, made of adobe with a gabled, tiled roof, and a big patio to the side, thatched with palm branches. It also had a six-foot effigy of a Mayan god outside in yellow sandstone.
When I pulled up and parked, the lights from the Merc were still well behind us. Gonzalo seemed to be unaware, or he didn’t care, and with his arm around Maria’s shoulders, laughing like a crazed, nightmare version of Daffy Duck, he led the way down the side of the building, to the main entrance.
A guy who was all dressed up in Levi’s and a clean shirt bowed when he saw Gonzalo and led us through a bar that might have looked more at home in Haight-Ashbury in ’67. The tables were low and made of wood, with benches built into the walls and chairs with woven rope seats. The walls were alternating red and blue and there were even posters of Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin. The aromas were all authentic too.
Through the bar was the terrace, thatched with raw pine branches over wooden tables with linen cloths and napkins. As we were led to what was obviously Gonzalo’s table, I kind of regretted having eaten. Every table we passed was loaded down with lobster, oysters, mussels, prawns and other seafood. I’m not big on seafood—if it wasn’t bleating or mooing and galloping across a field that morning, I’m not really interested—but this stuff looked appetizing.
I took Helen’s arm and leaned in close to her to speak in her ear. “I know what you want,” I said. She stopped dead in her tracks, looked up to scan my face for a moment, then continued walking more slowly. “Are you sure?”
I nodded once. “Sure, I’m sure. We haven’t much time, so shut up and listen. I need you to take Maria away from the table for ten or fifteen minutes. It’s got to look like macho bullshit, but I need to talk to this guy alone for a while. OK?”
She looked briefly astonished, but hid it. We came to our table and she sat next to me. Gonzalo was expansive, ordering four dozen oysters and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. Then he beckoned the waiter closer and spoke quietly in his ear. Meanwhile Helen smiled at me sweetly and said, “So what do I want?”
I picked up the knife, spun it in my fingers, and viewed her past it, like I had her in the sights of a gun. “I think you are a noble, honorable person, Helen. I don’t think you want very much for yourself. I think you are concerned about your friends, about your island…”
“Oh, my goodness,” she said, looking at Maria, “he’s deep, and sensitive.”
Across the terrace I saw the two boys walk in, in their Havaianas and big shirts. They sat at a table ten or fifteen paces away and glanced at me resentfully from time to time.
Maria raised a very skeptical eyebrow at me. She looked pissed. “Yeah?” she said, “How’d you get that? He looks to me like a guy who was in the Marines.” She gave me the kind of smile twelve-year-old girls give each other when they’re being spiteful. “No offense.”
The waiter went away and Gonzalo leaned back in his chair and spread his arms. One held the back of Maria’s chair, the other held the back of mine.
“Ladies, I know you do not approve and you do not indulge. That’s fine, I am not offended. But you will not object if David here and I occasionally slip away for a trip in the snow.” He laughed and slapped me hard on the shoulder. “Eh? Killer?” He frowned suddenly. “Listen to me. You serious about this writing shit?”
“Sure.”
“I mean like, to the exclusion of all else?”
“No.” I shook my head. “To me, Gonzalo, it’s all about enhancing your experience of life. You write about what you live, but you also live what you write about.”
As I said it I gave Helen a look. She sighed loudly and turned to her friend.
“I think I am going to throw up if I hear much more of this macho bullshit. I have to fix my hair. You want to come and let them get it out of their systems?”
Maria nodded and turned to Gonzalo. “Half an hour, we’ll have a couple of mojitos. The boys will keep an eye on us. But when we come back, we need to move on, OK, boys?”
I watched them walk away and gave Gonzalo a lopsided smile. He was about to get all excited and start slapping my shoulder again, but I sat forward in my chair with my elbows on the table and said, “So if a guy wanted to start any kind of business or enterprise around here, he would need to see you.”
“Straight to the point, huh?”
“Why waste time? Are you the man? Or is it the man behind you?”
“I’m the man.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“You didn’t come here to write a book.”
“I came here to write a book and to reinvent myself, Gonzalo. I am a Marine with experience of real combat, man-to-man. I have held a man in my arms while I pushed a knife deep into his gut, and felt him die. But I am an attorney. I have fought for clients from white-collar fraud to gang murders and everything in between. And I fought like every minute they were behind bars, was a minute of my life that I was robbed of freedom. Now, I want something new. I am cruising, searching, and I happen to stumble upon St. George, a small paradise where a man like me can be anything he wants to be.”
I held his eye, unwavering, as I said it.
He nodded. “You’re a dangerous man.”
“Make no mistake.”
“I should kill you.”
“And miss the best opportunity of your career? The way you walked in here, the way you move around this island, you ain’t chicken. You got a pair of cojones on you like a couple of watermelons. You know I can be useful to you, man. And you know I am not interested in New York, Mexico, Medellin…” I waved a hand. “That’s all bullshit to me. “I want my small, island kingdom, my women, my interests, my local power. And I am happy to pay tribute to Rome.”
His face went suddenly tense. “And why the fock should I give you my fockin’ island kingdom, pendejo? I don’t even know who the fock you are. You show up, insult my car, drive like you’re fockin’ crazy, and now you talk about your fockin’ island kingdom? What the f…”
I interrupted him before he could get into his stride.
“If I am full of shit, kill me tomorrow. Take me out to the sugarcane plantation and put a bullet in my head. It’s a good end for a soldier of fortune. I’m not complaining. But before you do that, why not play the hand the fates have dealt you? Hey, we have rapport, I like you and you like me, we see life the same. Play it out, what’s the worst that can happen? I let you down and you kill me. But what’s the best that can happen?”
His brows were screwed up tight like a fist, struggling to understand what I was telling him.
“What best? What you fockin’ talkin’ about?”
“Colombia used to control this whole area, all trade through here was governed by the Colombian drug lords. Now it’s controlled by Mexico, but you are trying to work a small corner that gives you some access to Florida, right?” I didn’t let him answer. “But what if there were some way to start pulling back some of that control over distribution through the Caribbean Sea?”
“You’re full of shit.”
I shrugged. “Sure. Anything I tell you here tonight is going to sound like a crock of shit. But if I tell you, and your bosses, in an of
fice in Medellin or Bogota, and I can back up what I am saying with facts, figures, names and addresses, then it will sound more serious.”
“Who the fock are you, David? Are you a cop?”
“No, Gonzalo.” I shook my head at him. “I am a good, old-fashioned soldier of fortune who has reached a certain age and is looking to settle down. I’m just spitballing here, kicking around a crazy idea. Let me run this island for you, and I will expand it all the way to Florida and Louisiana. And believe me, hermano, I have the connections to make it happen.”
“Yeah, sure, and I am Donald Trump. Why the hell should I believe you?”
He was mad and dismissive, and right then he was a very dangerous man.
“You shouldn’t. You should make me prove it. But you should also ask yourself who has better connections than a New York criminal lawyer with clients in corporate crime as well as good old gang murders and narcotics.”
A cluster of waiters appeared and proceeded toward us across the terrace carrying an ice bucket with champagne, a tray of flutes and a large dish full of oysters on a bed of salad with a dismembered lobster in the center.
They set it all down on the table and poured the champagne. Gonzalo was leaning back in his chair, scowling at me, like I had ruined his evening. I leaned forward and grinned. “You got a problem?”
It must have sounded confrontational to him because he puffed out his little chest. I let my amusement show and shook my head. “No, Gonzalo, I am asking you if you have a problem. If there is anyone on this island who is giving you a hard time, who thinks he’s a bigger deal than he really is.”
The shot wasn’t as long as it looked. I figured if Gonzalo was here trying to revive Colombia’s interests, it was even odds there was either another Colombian cartel at work, or even a Mexican one keeping tabs on him. His eyes were narrow and hard.
“You mean apart from you?”
“Hey, I am humble, man. I do not want to tread on anybody’s toes. But if I can help out a new friend, and at the same time show good faith, I’d like to do that.”