Wet Work

by Christopher Buckley

  He knew better than to argue. It might pass of its own accord, like a low-pressure zone. He checked his watch and said, "I better go." He strapped on his pistol and gathered up his now-worn medical journals, resisting the weariness that attached itself to the task so as to not encourage Charley's tunnel scheme. He opened the refrigerator and removed the small saltshaker with the hinged lid. He shook the grains to make sure they were loose, checked the holes in the shaker to see they were clear and slid it into the pocket of his jacket. "Maybe tonight'll be the night," he said. Charley was still staring off toward Key Biscayne with his back to him.

  "Ten A.M.," said Charley.

  They'd chosen the hotel for its proximity to Neon Leon's restaurant on Southwest Seventy-third Street between Southwest Fifty-eighth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Place. Felix reached the Winn-Dixie-"The Beef People"-parking lot across the street ten minutes after leaving the Biltmore. He shut off the engine and checked his watch; it was two minutes to eight. At eight he saw Rostow emerge from Neon Leon's and walk toward him. He got in, shut the door, and let out a disconsolate belch. "Got any Pepto?" Felix nodded at the glove compartment. Rostow opened it. There were three new bottles of Pepto-Bismol. Rostow opened a bottle and took a long slug. He licked his lips pink.

  "How's the squid tonight?"

  "Sucks," said Rostow. He sat with the bottle of Pepto open between his legs. "I've been thinking-"

  "So's the boss."

  "-about Mac's idea. The incendiary. The problem is getting our own fire truck. We're getting hung up on the truck. It doesn't have to be a truck. Why does it have to be a truck? Why can't it just be an ambulance?"

  "He's called a meeting tomorrow at ten. He wants to dig a tunnel."

  "A tunnel." Rostow took another swig of pink. "I don't know if Bundy is going to go for any more digging. He says burying Chin put his back out. Says he's having lumbar problems. But I can't eat much more of this shit."

  Felix crossed Southwest Seventy-third Street and walked into Neon Leon's. There was a Lucite copy of the Venus de Milo in the lobby, lit from beneath so that her stumps and severed neck glowed brightly. Felix wondered if this was intentional.

  The maitre d' gave him a bright smile. "Dr. Allende! Like a clock!" He led Felix to his regular table, reserved for him every night the last two weeks, a well-lit corner booth where he could read his medical journals. Felix sat and, again resisting the temptation to sigh, spread his magazines out before him: New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Gastroenterological Review, The Lancet. Tonight he'd wrapped JAMA's cover around the new Sports Illustrated so that he wouldn't have to spend another night pretending to read about renal dysfunction.

  His regular waiter, Ignacio, appeared. They spoke in Spanish.

  "You're late tonight," Ignacio reproved him with mock severity. "Four minutes."

  Felix made a clack-clack gesture with his hand. "Medical conferences give doctors an excuse to talk too much."

  Ignacio nodded knowingly. "How long is the conference?"

  Felix gave a world-weary shrug. "Until we find a cure for cancer. What's good tonight?"

  "Nothing," said Ignacio.

  "Okay, I'll take the nothing and some fresh fish, grilled, no butter, no sauce. And coffee."

  "A sus ordenes," said Ignacio with his customary flourish.

  As always, Felix asked if the squid was fresh-just to make sure it was on the menu-and, as always, ordered something else. Calamares en su tinta, squid in its own ink. A bowl of calamares en su tinta was a dinner out of Jules Verne: rubbery white tentacles rising out of a creamy, purple lagoon. What a strange obsession. Chin said that Barazo had developed a taste for it, even before seeing it for the first time, after someone told him it was the favorite dish of Juan Carlos de Borbon, King of Spain. (It isn't.) Barazo scattered hundred-dollar tips at Neon Leon's like autumn leaves; they were only too happy to have it, fresh, on the menu every night, over the objections of the chef.

  Felix opened his New England journal of Medicine and scanned an article about a surgical procedure developed by doctors in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to repair kneecaps shattered by IRA bullets. The article interested him more than most, being familiar himself with the geography of knees owing to his own torn cruciate ligaments, but he was soon lost in the technicalities of the protocols and thumbing listlessly through learned articles on hyperthyroidism, shingles, and sundry -ectomies and -omas. Finally he switched to his concealed Sports Illustrated and read with fascination an article about a Mexican priest who supported his orphanage by wrestling professionally under the name Fray Tormenta-Brother Storm. Every Saturday Fray Tormenta would hitchhike into Mexico City from the town of Xometla and earn fifty dollars for getting into the ring and being brutalized by gigantic Aztecs with names like El Insolente and Torquemada. Felix learned that in Mexico wrestling is not faked; ears get bitten off, limbs broken, genitals… At dawn Fray Tormenta would return to the orphanage, usually unconscious in the back of a pickup truck, in time to say morning Mass for his orphans. Felix's eyes were burning by the end of the article. He was tearing it out to show to Charley when his beeper went off.

  They did regular beeper checks, so he walked to the phone with no particular urgency. He dialed and reached Bundy in half a ring. Bundy's voice was urgent. He said, "He's moving. Two cars. The Package and a girl up front, three goombahs following. They just turned right on Sixty-second Avenue. He's heading your way."

  Felix hung up and walked back to his table. He sat down and noticed that his hands were trembling. Ignacio appeared.

  "Your fish, Doctor. Aren't you well?"

  "Fine."

  "You've been working too hard. That's no good. Who's going to take care of us when the doctors get sick, eh?"

  Felix poked at his fish. It was pointless putting any in his mouth, since it had gone completely dry. Barazo was headed for the restaurant, would walk in any moment, a man who beat up teenage girls, cut off the heads of animals to propitiate Afro-Caribbean gods, put plastic cocktail swords into people's eyes. Felix explained to himself that it was entirely rational to be scared of a man like this, but this didn't help.

  Jesus Celaya Barazo made a Miami entrance a few minutes later. First to enter was one of the bodyguards, two hundred and fifty pounds or so of Ray-Banned malevolence, followed by another of similar aspect, followed by the Package and his woman. She was dark and beautiful in the conventional way, but it was the dress that demanded attention, if it could be called that. Generically it seemed more of a wet suit, though one designed to attract, rather than repel, sharks: shocking white, with a neckline that plunged itself below the navel, clearly designated by means of a conspicuous opal. The lower half of her outfit consisted of rubber hot pants and the stays of a garter belt that stretched taut a pair of black nylons studded with rhinestones. Her five-inch heels made her taller than Barazo, and forced her to walk somewhat like a circus clown on stilts. The third goombah followed behind, meting out mind-your-own-business stares to those male diners unable to concentrate on their food. The rubber left little to the imagination, and Barazo's face showed his pleasure at the libidinous fission triggered by his woman's colliding nuclei.

  He was himself a heavyset man somewhere on the dark side of forty with a short ponytail and, somewhat oddly, the mustache now permanently associated with Hitler rather than with Oliver Hardy. The rest of his face was concealed under a three-day beard and oversized red sunglasses. It was a face not open to the general public.

  The maitre d' created deferential bow waves as he led the party to the corner banquette that Chin had told them was reserved only for him, much the way Jilly's in New York always keeps a table for Sinatra, even if he's singing in Australia that night. Two bodyguards took up positions on either side of the booth, hands thrust into shoulder bags that Felix recognized as the rig used by the Secret Service to deemphasize their Uzi submachine guns. The third kept by the door, scowling at anyone who entered.

  Champagne
arrived at the table. Felix watched over the top of JAMA, heart beating loudly in his ears, trying to keep his hands from rustling the pages. The girl sidled up against Barazo. From his own table, he could see beneath Barazo's table and what he saw alarmed him. Fear seized him. A man who has his female companion administer manual labor under the table while he contemplates a dish that would make most stouthearted men gag is no man to be trifled with. Felix wanted to get out of there, right now; he reached for his wallet to pay. They could dig a tunnel or drop a hydrogen bomb on him, but this was not going to work. My God, look at him. She's… Ignacio, quickly, the check. She's finished. A finger bowl? With flower petals in it. Now she was licking the fingers ostentatiously. Classy.

  Felix opened his wallet to get money and there she was, looking up at him from her high school graduation picture, taken a few days before that night in the clearing on the island. He stared. He took it out of the sleeve and turned it over and read what she'd written there, ironic words, given what had happened a few days later: "To my best friend in the world, love, T." Felix turned it over and put it back in the sleeve and when he put the wallet away his hands were no longer trembling and his heart was quiet in his ears. When he looked back at Barazo's table he saw the maitre d' nodding with a smile that could have lubed the chassis of a half dozen stretch limos; and pressed the timer on his watch. During two weeks of ordering, he and Rostow had devised a squid algorithm. The calamares should arrive on Barazo's table in six minutes.

  Felix waited three minutes and got up and started walking as if he were going to the pay phone. When he passed the counter on which the cooks set the dishes to be picked up by the waiters, he stopped. He peered over the counter. The kitchen was a sweat hive of activity. One of the cooks stood nearby, hunched over, clobbering the claws of stone crabs with a wooden mallet.

  "Hola," said Felix. The cook looked up and nodded politely. Felix said in Spanish, "The food is good here, really good."

  "Gracias."

  Felix reached inside his pocket and flipped open the lid of the saltshaker. "I've eaten here every night for two weeks and each dish is better than the one before."

  The cook smiled again, this time more easily. He said, "You must be getting pretty sick of it, then."

  "Al contrario." Felix beamed. "I only hope I can eat my way through everything before I leave town."

  "Have you tried the grouper? It's good. We poach it in a scallop broth with cilantro. It's nice."

  "You know, what I really want to try is the calamares en su tinta. I bet that's really good."

  The cook shrugged. "Well, if you like that sort of thing."

  "You know, I'd like to try it, but I'm a little, you know, I didn't eat my first raw oyster till a few years ago. What's it look like?"

  "Someone's just ordered some." He shouted, "Oye, Milton, dame los calamares." He set the dish on the counter in front of Felix. "Here," he said. "It's peasant food."

  Felix leaned over to smell, the shaker ready inside his hand. "Urn," he managed. "Sabroso." The cook turned back to his half-hammered crabs.

  A moment later a hand whisked the dish off the countertop.

  "So," said the cook, looking up. "Are you going to order calamares?"

  "I think I'll go for the grouper, thanks." Felix smiled.

  "Good choice," winked the cook.

  Felix returned to his table almost weightless with relief. He sat down and picked up his coffee cup and when he saw Barazo's table he nearly spilled it. There was nothing in front of Barazo.

  Felix searched the other tables with his eyes and saw it. The bowl of calamares was in front of a middle-aged woman who was viewing it with some uncertainty. Oh my God, he thought, oh no.

  In the next instant the maitre d' appeared at the table and grabbed the dish without so much as a beg-your-pardon and began berating a waiter loudly in the mother tongue. Idiota! Son los calamares del Señor Barazo!

  The squid were set, with apologies befitting nobility, before Barazo, who began greedily to eat. He forked a tentacle and offered it to his girl, who made a face. Felix was sure that Barazo would have slugged her for that if they'd been alone. If they made it home tonight, probably he would. From this he deduced she was a new girl. Barazo ate without interruption. Felix remembered the old fisherman in Hemingway's story urging the great marlin to eat the bonito at the end of his line. When Barazo began to wipe the bowl with his bread, Felix got up and went to the phone. "Yellow Cab? I'm at Neon Leon's. Please send a taxi to pick me up." He went back to the table.

  It happened suddenly. One minute Barazo was leaning back, smoking a cigarette, and the next he was bringing up squid with ballistic velocity, as if a poltergeist had performed the Heimlich maneuver on him. Truly, it was not a pretty sight.

  Felix quickly made his way to the table, demanding in a loud voice, "What did this man have to eat?" The maitre d' had gone white. Waiters were rushing with towels, a new tablecloth, an empty salad bowl. The bodyguards, helpless in the face of having no one obvious to shoot, nevertheless directed their professional energies on the waiter with the salad bowl, punching him in the chest and sending him sprawling. The girl, whose person had received a copious share of Barazo's gastric ejecta, was screeching hysterically for towels. Barazo himself was pitched forward over the table making noises like a distressed sea lion.

  "I'm a doctor," Felix shouted. "What did this man eat?"

  "Squid," murmured the maitre d' almost inaudibly, "in its ink."

  "SQUID? IN ITS INK?" Felix shouted back. "Exactly as I suspected. This man has food poisoning." The guard moved in on the maitre d'.

  "No," he gasped miserably. "It's not possible. We use only the freshest…"

  Felix was scribbling furiously on a notepad. He tore off the page and handed it to one of the bodyguards. "Call this number immediately. Tell them to send an ambulance. Tell them Dr. Allende is here at the scene." He turned to the maitre d'. "And a fortunate thing too!" The bodyguard roughly shoved his way through to the phone.

  Felix located a dry area of Barazo's wrist, put his finger on it while looking at his watch and counted to ten. "Hm!" he said, shaking his head. "Hm."

  The door burst open a remarkably efficient three minutes later as two heavyset men from the Emergency Medical Service rushed in with a collapsible gurney. Wincing only slightly, at the sight, they took Barazo's vital signs. Felix, somewhat caught up in the moment, kept barking orders at them; McNamara finally said, "We can handle it, Doctor, thanks."

  They strapped Barazo onto the gurney and wheeled him out, bodyguards following. At the door Felix shouted back at the maitre d', "You better save the rest of those squid for the health inspectors!"

  Bundy and McNamara pushed the collapsed gurney into the back of the ambulance. Bundy got in the driver's seat, Mac into the back. Felix climbed in. Then the bodyguard started in. Mac held up a hand. "Sorry, it's against reg-"

  The bodyguard shoved him back brusquely, and when Mac renewed his complaint, pulled out a MAC 10 machine pistol and pointed it at him. "Drive," he said.

  "All right," said Mac, "but that thing better be registered, because I'm going to report this when we get to the hospital, and there are always police at the Emergency entrance."

  The prospect did not faze the bodyguard in the least: "Move it."

  Bundy pulled out into the street with the siren going. Through the rear windows, Felix saw the other two bodyguards get into their car and pull out behind them. He was looking for Charley and Rostow's car when the bodyguard said, "Where we going?"

  "Mercy," said Felix, putting a stethoscope to Barazo's chest.

  "How come not South Miami? It's right there, four blocks."

  Felix yelled, "Look at him-he's been infected with a, a staphylococcal enterotoxin." This much was true, a scruple (1.296 grams) easily filched from a microbiology lab in Stony Brook, New York. Felix said angrily, "Can't you see that he needs to be destaph, destaphylococcalized? They don't have the facilities for that at South Miami."

>   The bodyguard stared suspiciously. Felix shouted, "Do you want him to die?"

  "Okay, but fast."

  Bundy was doing seventy on the South Dixie Highway, northbound, siren screaming. Mac caught Felix's eye: move back, give me a clear shot. As Felix did, Bundy swerved to avoid hitting a car. Felix fell toward the bodyguard, who felt the bulge under Felix's arm. He reacted instantly. He dove into Felix like a linebacker, breaking three of his ribs and shoving him back into Mac.

  His first shot went through the forward bulkhead, missing Bundy by a few inches. The second went into Mac's thigh. Felix grabbed the man's arm. The third shot went through the ambulance's rear window, shattering it. "Shoot him," Mac grunted. "Will you please shoot him?" Mac was pinned against the forward bulkhead by Felix. Felix, occupied by the intense pain in his chest and the bodyguard's 9mm, had no hand available at the moment to reach his own weapon. A second later Barazo's chase car slammed into the back of the ambulance. Felix heard another rib crack.

  When he opened his eyes he saw the bodyguard's face, livid with rage, pressed up against his own, mouth open. He could see the fillings. He is trying to bite off my nose. Mac had reached around Felix and managed to get a hold of both the man's hands. Felix couldn't reach his gun, but flailing with his left he felt something come into his grip. It was the sphygmomanometer. He got it around the twenty-one-inch neck and Velcroed it shut. The bulb was hanging down the bodyguard's back. He had to reach to get it in his hand, putting his nose in dangerous proximity to the snapping teeth. He butted the man's nose hard with his forehead, causing himself extreme pain. Bulb in hand, he began to pump.

  The blood-pressure cuff began to inflate. The bodyguard, realizing what was happening, struggled, but Mac held him tightly. Felix pumped and pumped and the bodyguard's face went red, then purplish. He made a sound like the person in the next stall in the public men's room usually makes. Finally he went limp. Felix and Mac pitched forward on top of him. Felix saw the pressure meter on the blood-pressure cuff: 300 over… nothing.