Jim could see it like a photograph, Ribamar waiting for him high in the foliage of a tree, maybe sixty feet above the jungle floor. There he’d be safe from the cats and covered over by vegetation where Ramon’s men couldn’t find him. Ribamar could survive for a month like this and the idea of it made Jim giddy. Ribamar wouldn’t try to escape. He wouldn’t try to walk out of the jungle. He would survive eating honey from beehives, hearts of palm, and the sticky sap from milk trees that actually tastes like cow’s milk. He could heal his wounds with plants and barks. Jim felt sure that Ribamar was alive. He could last for a long time and they’d never find him. Jim would find him.
Ribamar had said that in a twelve-hour day a man could cover forty kilometers in the forest if he kept moving and eating some dried meat or fish every two hours. But in order to keep going at such a pace a man needed to have a goal. Jim was traveling to save Ribamar, that’s what he told himself, but sometimes the girl came into his head. He was running to Angela, though she was in Manaus, looking for him. It was a strange thing.
* * *
By the middle of the second day, the walk was no longer pleasant. The heat had become oppressive and Jim’s light clothing felt leaden. The temperature and humidity wiped out thoughts and daydreams. Jim focused on his breathing and placing one foot in front of the next. There was no excitement or fear about what lay ahead. He just kept walking with his eyes fixed on the ground. Jim’s men were twenty years younger, but they couldn’t go at his pace. Every half hour he’d sit on a log and wait impatiently, and when they’d caught up and given him a sullen nod he pushed back into the dense forest with branches and fronds and biting insects in his face. He listened to the men’s muttering and heavy breathing falling behind. Jim avoided shallow streams and more open stretches where Ramon Vega might have patrols moving about.
They arrived at the north bank of the Rio Novo at about 3:00 P.M. on the second day. They had to make it across, about eighty feet, without soaking their rifles. This was a very nervous moment. The only way, Jim figured, was to rest the guns on logs and push them across. Once the men were floating in the river, they’d be sitting ducks for Ramon’s men. Worse yet, to get the logs across, the men had to kick with all their strength. It was the dry season and the river was teeming with red-bellied piranhas. Any commotion in the water was a dinner call: come feast on flesh. One of the gunmen became sick with fear and was certain piranhas were attacking his legs. But it was all nerves. The men got across to the other side and scampered up the bank with their packs and guns.
* * *
Jim figured it was about one mile to the camp from the river’s edge. He could do this last part blindfolded. Now he had a plan. Approaching the clearing from the northwest, the men would come to a small bluff at the west end of the landing strip that looked down on the buildings. From this hill they would be about eighty or a hundred yards from the barracks. Jim would take a look and decide. He had no idea how many men Ramon had left guarding the camp. If it was twenty men, the situation was hopeless. Jim would have to crawl back down the hill and hike back to Angela’s village. Also, he was concerned about the camp dogs. Were his two dogs still alive? Or had Ramon Vega killed them and brought new dogs that would begin barking the moment Jim and his men approached the ridge or maybe before?
After resting for a while, the men neared the clearing about a half hour before dark, as Jim had planned. Early in Jim’s jungle education, Ribamar had reflected that as the forest cools down at the end of day the jaguar come out to hunt, when it is practically invisible approaching through the foliage. It was an appealing idea. Jim hoped that Ramon’s men would be relaxed and perhaps hungry after a long, hot day.
Jim poked his head above the ridge. It was perfect, almost too perfect. There were two men cooking meat on Martha’s outdoor grill between the cantina and the small building where the girls entertained. Jim’s dogs were sitting beside them waiting for food. Suddenly the dogs started wheeling around and wagging their tails, but they weren’t barking. The two men must have thought, Such foolish animals. There were three other men drinking beer outside the cantina. Jim couldn’t see any more, only five.
Now was the moment, before someone went inside. Jim signaled the other two men to come onto the ridge alongside him. He would kill the two who were cooking. His gunmen would shoot the others who were twenty yards closer. Jim’s shot was about a hundred yards, long for a rifle with an open sight, but he felt certain he could hit them. One of the men by the grill was facing Jim and gesturing with his arms as if narrating a story.
They would all shoot on the count of three. Jim aimed for the center of the storyteller’s chest. One. Two. Jim squeezed it off and the man crumpled and went down on his side. Jim tried to shut out the gunfire of his men. His other target was confused, like a turkey trying to decide where to run. Jim shot him in the neck.
Jim’s men had dropped two of three beside the cantina. The other one ran into the forest.
Okay. It was the best they could have hoped for. Jim wasn’t concerned about the one who had run off. There was no telling if there were more men inside the buildings or if Ramon had patrols coming back in. They’d wait and watch.
In the jungle, it always seemed miraculous, the way night fell like a black curtain. Jim and his men stayed on the hill, listening, dozing. It felt like a reprieve.
* * *
At dawn, he walked back into his camp. The air was still and chilly and perfectly lucid. The four men lay where they had fallen. The buildings were all empty. Everything hung in the balance. It could have gone either way. He might still have left the clearing with his dreams.
That was the moment. But Jim sat on the dirt for a while across from the cantina and shook his head. He felt this powerful emptiness close over his arms and chest like a net. There was no answer to it. No moves to make. Nothing. It was too late now.
One of the men was calling to him from the direction of the sluice box. Jim came ahead sullenly like a big kid. He didn’t want to open that door. He had never smelled anything like it before. Maybe his father long ago.
Jim and the men started pulling bodies from the gully beside the sluice box, but mostly it was Jim. He pulled and lifted with wrath. He wrenched them out of the gravel, hoping, but no, he saw the two of them very quickly, Luis and Martha, who was wearing her white apron. Oh, their legs and arms were tangled; he couldn’t get them out of the gully. He pulled them, but they were stuck in the gravel.
He was fierce or he couldn’t have done it, one body after the next covered with flies and maggots. He was soaked from the effort. Some of them he couldn’t recognize at all. Many faces were gone altogether. It was too horrible to look and Jim rolled them onto their bellies. Luis hadn’t wanted to stay behind. Twenty bodies Jim counted, but Ribamar wasn’t here. Jim wanted to run away, because he was scared that he hadn’t looked closely enough and that Ribamar might be lying on his belly beside the others. Jim couldn’t bear to turn them all over again.
One of the men was calling him and he tried to tune him out. No, Ribamar wasn’t here. None of the men had scars on their backs. He wasn’t here. Enough of this.
There were more bodies in the little creek that fed the dam. It was a lottery and Jim was expected to make each selection. If he could just will it his way, please, just once.
Four more bodies. Two girls. One of them was wearing red sandals and a skirt. She had no face at all. It took him a moment to understand. He’d bought her the imported sandals in Manaus, but she hardly ever wore them. No, impossible. This wasn’t her. He took a breath. She wouldn’t be here. It was one of the other girls. Why had they killed the girls? He tried to keep moving down this path. They were innocents.
She’d gone back to him in the city. It was settled. Her father had said so. He loved her. He’d had a plan. The sandals stuck in his mind. Angela didn’t like heels, even little ones. She loved to walk in her bare feet. He’d wanted to take her back to Florida. She was trying to be beautiful for him. She
was just a poor girl.
It wasn’t his fault. She didn’t need to dress up for him. He would have taken care of her. He would have kept her safe in the big house. He loved it when she walked in the field in her bare feet. She’d hiked here for two days from her village to surprise him and fly back with him to Manaus.
There was so much he wanted to give to her. The flies began to settle on her legs, and he brushed them away. He would give the money to her father and mother and beg them. Her parents would love him. He’d convince them. He’d go to them and weep. Forgive me.
Ribamar wasn’t in the creek. Jim needed to find Ribamar. That was the only answer. Maybe the bodies could then disappear and Jim would be able to move on. Luis had dreamed of bodies crowding his bed. Luis had pleaded; it was embarrassing. Ribamar must be alive. Nothing could kill him. Ribamar moved through the bush like a spirit. Jim couldn’t push the red shoes out of his head.
Jim headed into the jungle behind the barracks. One of the gunmen tried to follow and Jim waved him off. He plowed right into branches and vines, let them beat against his face. He wanted to feel it. He was hoping the little cats came to him in the light when he could see. He craved them with their whining baby sounds and yellow eyes. He’d kill them. He’d fling them against the trees and laugh. Let them rip his chest and neck. He’d kill them all.
Jim fell asleep curled beneath a tree and when he woke up it was night. Maybe he’d be eaten before the morning. The idea made him happy and he closed his eyes and waited.
* * *
In the morning he was walking again. He and Ribamar always headed this way, working south along a dried creek. They could always find something to shoot for Martha. Every fifteen or twenty minutes Jim pounded on the base of a sumaumeira tree and the sound echoed deep into the forest. He’d been swimming way offshore. He’d wanted to get out so far he couldn’t make it back to land. But as the morning grew hotter he wasn’t so sure which way to go. He was feeling hungry and light-headed, losing his clearest intentions in the heat. He wanted to do the right thing, but Jim was walking back to who he was. He began thinking of breakfast and a good bed. He walked on and on, beating the tree trunks to locate his conviction, but he couldn’t capture it back; he was hungry. He couldn’t keep going like this, deeper into the jungle. But he kept walking while making little bargains like a salesman. Only another half hour and he’d turn back. Maybe he would return to Florida. He had money there. He would need to get back to the river before dark. Ramon’s men would be out searching for him. But once he had decided to turn around, it felt pleasant to keep moving ahead a little farther. It felt like he was being pulled ahead, gliding. The heat and thirst were playing with his head and Jim was moving much more slowly when he heard the distant sound. Two beats, just the way he and Ribamar had practiced. Jim beat his stick against a tree and there it was coming back to him. Ribamar was alive and sending back the signal. He had stayed alive for Jim, living in the trees for nearly two weeks, waiting to tell him.
After another half hour Jim pushed through a dense tangle of vines and limbs and there in a tiny clearing was the old man sitting on some leaves and leaning against a thick tree that had been his drum. Ribamar was exhausted and weak, but he wasn’t surprised. He had a serene expression. He had envisioned this moment for days; he willed it. Not one word, but he reached out his arms to Jim like a man who had been waiting patiently for his family to come for him.
* * *
One last stop.
He knocked on her door.
It’s Jim, he said.
There was a pause. He knew she would quickly reinvent herself. When she threw open the door she embraced him. Oh, I’m so relieved, Iliana gushed. I thought he’d killed you. I tried to reach you in Florida. Jim could feel the emotion rippling through her body. She was a marvel.
He had never visited her little hotel room that was dark and dreary with all of her failures and disappointments. He slowly took it in. She had money now and the prospect of much more, but Iliana kept this lonely place, maybe as a reminder to keep herself sharp.
Let me see you, he said, but she held on to him tight. She knew.
He pushed her away and looked at her face. Her expression was wounded and needy, as though she wanted to touch his cheek but couldn’t quite manage it.
No foreplay. He grabbed her by the neck, the thumb and fingers of his right hand digging into her windpipe as if he’d wrench it out of her throat.
How many points did he give you? Jim asked, Twenty points? She shook her head.
Thirty points? Thirty points to kill them all? Even the girls? Tell me.
She tapped his leg, an old habit. He let her breathe.
She gasped. Don’t, she managed, before he throttled her again.
Tell me. He squeezed until she turned bright red and her eyes bulged.
She gasped, Fifty percent.
Equal partners, he said, very good. But you know he would have killed you in a few days. It would never have held up.
She looked at Jim with terrified little-girl eyes.
When Jim had imagined killing her, it was very satisfying. In the jungle he played it over many times in his head, and each time she fought like a devil. She coiled around him like a python, scratched him with her nails, or she reached for some hidden weapon and then he broke her neck. But at the moment, the real moment, she didn’t do anything of the sort. She yielded. She hung limp like a rag. She gave herself to him.
He let her breathe. Jim couldn’t do it. They were both breathing very hard. She began to cry. He shook his head no as if to say, Okay, okay. It’s finished. He gave her a last embrace.
She sobbed. I didn’t know he would kill them. Believe me. She cried.
I do, he answered. She probably didn’t know. Ramon wouldn’t have told her.
I never thought he’d kill everyone. There was no reason. They would have all given up and gone to work for him. He didn’t need to shoot the girls.
Jim nodded, but she’d made a mistake. Don’t keep selling when a deal is already agreed upon. She’d woken Jim and his mind was racing again. “Everyone” stuck in his mind. Did she know that Angela was in the camp, had been shot and thrown into the ditch? She must have seen Angela from the window of the plane? Did it gladden her? Of course it did.
I’m going now, he said to her slowly. I’m leaving Brazil. She looked at him with pleading eyes. I don’t want you to go, Jim. He smiled, because she was so quick and nimble, but she had misjudged him. He was watching her eyes. She was still whimpering but already thinking about the money and how to handle Ramon. Maybe kill him. She’d have to kill him to ever see the gold. You had to admire her. But Jim had played these games his whole life and no one was a better reader of intention.
After a pause, he said, There’s a whole part of the story you don’t know about yet. It’s the one good part, the only good part.
Jim opened her front door and Ribamar walked in, still dressed in torn, stained shorts, his wound seeping through a clean bandage, and he smelled from the jungle. Ribamar said something to her in a quiet voice, and Jim stepped out and closed the door behind him.
33.
In the fall of 1983, while Jim was still recuperating from Brazil and beginning a new life with Phyllis in Florida, Marvin Gesler was living in a rooming house in the East End of London. For more than two years he had been spending cash he had taken from his safe in Toronto while rushing to leave the country one step ahead of the police. Whenever he left his sparsely furnished room, he dressed in a long coat and sunglasses, fearing that he would be identified by the police and extradited to Canada for tax fraud. He spent most of his waking time on park benches, riding buses, or wandering aimlessly.
Marvin was a very wealthy man with secret accounts in Geneva and the Cayman Islands, but he was afraid to travel to these places to collect his money. He believed that if he entered one of these financial institutions and identified himself he would be arrested and flown back to Toronto.
Fin
ally, when he was down to his last three hundred dollars and there was no other alternative besides life on the street, Marvin took a train to Geneva and walked into the chilly front room of the Anker Bank in the city center. He had never been here before.
He presented his passport and driver’s license while dreading that the pencil-thin bank manager would check a computerized list and make a phone call. Marvin was thinking about spending the next twenty years in prison and he wasn’t listening.
The banker patiently repeated his question. Marvin gathered himself, gave his password, and then asked for $1 million in cash. The man nodded and Marvin tried to control his nerves. In fifteen minutes the banker had returned with Marvin’s briefcase filled with large bills. Marvin didn’t bother to count the money. He said thank you, and then, as an afterthought, he asked for the wire transfer protocols for future transactions.
Marvin walked to a travel agency while trying to decide where he should go. He might have chosen any destination on the planet. He was a fugitive. He suspected that no one, save his elderly parents, cared if he lived or died.
With cash, he paid for a one-way ticket to Nassau. The Bahamas came to mind because Marvin had traveled there a few times with Jim.
Marvin walked through customs at the airport in Geneva without incident. He boarded the plane, got off in Nassau, showed his driver’s license, and passed through Bahamian customs. It began to dawn upon him that outside of Canada, no one cared about him and his legal problems. The joke was that he had jailed himself for two years, worried, and lived on pennies for no reason. How could he have been so stupid?
The Dream Merchant Page 26