by Peter Gent
“Senora ...” The maid held out the phone; Suzy strode quickly over and snatched it up to her ear. She knew who it would be.
Cyrus admired his young girl friend. Her taut nude body had excited him down at the hot springs, but after the walk up the hill he was too tired to do anything. It had been a nice experience while it lasted. While Suzy talked on the phone, Cyrus decided to buy a golf cart for trips back and forth to the Indian hot springs.
The Hot Springs Ranch was one of the best swaps Cyrus Chandler’s daddy ever made. He swapped five thousand acres of leases, expected to be the middle of the biggest oil play since the East Texas field. The oil play turned out to be five wells that pumped two barrels of salt water for every one of oil, while the ranch covered 507,000 acres and fronted on thirty-five miles of the Rio Grande and some of its more spectacular canyons. Cyrus’s daddy had made a good trade.
The international operator left the line; Suzy turned and grinned widely at the old man. “Go ahead, sir.” The international operator returned to the line.
“Suzy?” It was a weak, shaky voice.
“Yes,” she said, smiling to Cyrus and pursing a kiss on her lips.
“Bobby Hendrix is dead.” A.D.’s voice cracked. He couldn’t say it fast enough.
Suzy looked at her nails and decided that they needed a manicure before she and Cyrus flew in to Presidio to a party to meet some Mexican nationals. They were friends of the Cobiancos and wanted to discuss export/import. Cyrus’s divorce was going through quickly; Junie had found a decorator she wanted to marry.
“Well?” A.D.’s quavering voice crackled with static.
“That’s fine. Bye-bye.” Suzy hung up, picturing A.D. coming out of a phone booth, looking like Peter Lorre in some dismal foreign country, covered with sweat and flies. She laughed and walked to Cyrus, who stared out at the distant mountains.
“Who was that?” Cyrus didn’t turn away from the glass wall and the spectacular view.
“Girl talk.” Suzy walked up behind him, wrapping her arms around him. She lay her head on his blue terry-cloth shoulder. “What a nice stomach you have, Mr. Chandler.” She left the comparison to Dick Conly’s hard, protruding abdomen unsaid but understood.
Dick Conly would have quickly ferreted A.D. out of that phone call and drawn his connection to events in Mexico. But Conly was up somewhere in the Pecos Mountains sitting on a pile of Mexican gold pieces. Cyrus Chandler merely wondered how to ship a golf cart to far Southwest Texas for a good price.
THE EMPEROR OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
TAYLOR RUSK AND Terry Dudley were the last two left in the hotel bar, very drunk on many double Herradura Silver tequilas on the rocks. The network guys had all disappeared, first coming by the table, nodding their individual little heads at Taylor and asking Terry, “Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s okay,” the seven-foot man answered each time, weaving in his seat and nodding at Taylor.
“Are you okay?” the network guys would then ask the totally drunk union director, whose upper-body wobble was quite noticeable.
“Yeah,” Taylor Rusk growled at them. “He’s okay.”
When all the network guys were gone and the tequila was almost gone, Taylor looked at Terry Dudley and said, “They killed him.”
“Who?” Dudley was skeptical.
“I don’t know who and I don’t know why, but I do know they killed him, Terry. Bobby wouldn’t go anywhere with Charlie Stillman, especially on an airplane. He hated airplanes almost as much as he hated Charlie Stillman, which is as much as I hate Charlie Stillman.” When Terry didn’t answer, Taylor asked, “So what do we do now?”
“Cancel the show and get quickly and quietly out of town. There’s nothing we can do for Hendrix. The network’s already been in contact with the embassy and the consul. We can clear Bobby’s body through at Mérida, which may not sound like a big deal, but it gets complicated when a man enters Mexico alive in Cozumel and tries to leave dead from the Yucatán.”
The waiter relentlessly replaced the empty glasses in front of the two big men, who relentlessly emptied them of tequila and banged them down on the wooden tabletop. Taylor drank several glasses in silence. Thinking. Wondering.
“What do you know about Harrison H. Harrison?” he finally asked Dudley.
“Harrison H. Harrison was a ’39 graduate of the University with a degree in geology,” Dudley rattled off. “Spent a while wildcatting in South America and Libya, screwed around helping to get a Republican party going in Texas. He had mixed success, mostly around the big rich cities like Houston, Dallas, Midland and Tyler. Then he went to work for his daddy at Venture Capital Offshore. The family is centered in New York. He is presently president and CEO of VCO, a company that specializes in putting together offshore joint venture deals.”
Taylor was amazed by Dudley. “Why and how do you know all that?”
“He belonged to Spur in ’39,” Terry Dudley answered quickly and surely. “I keep track of everybody who was ever in Spur unless they’re dead or listed as missing in action.” Dudley laughed in a series of hisses that convulsed his shoulders and head. “It’s a big organization, Taylor. Did you ever keep up with any of the guys that were in Spur with us?”
“The ten top onions?” Taylor’s eyes were red. “Not really. I see some names pop up in the news, like yours and mine. That’s all.”
“That was what it was for, you know, Taylor?”
“What?”
“Spur,” the seven-foot man continued. “Making and maintaining contacts with smart, ambitious, motivated people from your university. The whole idea is to stay in contact, to communicate consistent goals and plans for the future, not just to our generation or college but to all Texans and all Americans. We have powerful members, influential, like Harrison, Senator Thompson, the governor, Cyrus Chandler ... the list goes on. The initiation just began that night at the Tower, Taylor. It continues for years, hopefully for generations ...”
“Terry?” Taylor interrupted, “are you trying to tell me that there is an old-boy system?”
“It’s more than just an old-boy network, for God’s sake. It’s a long-term plan and you were asked to be part of it. You can still be part of it. Once a person’s been taken into Spur, he only loses his membership when he dies.”
Taylor Rusk shook his head. “List me among the missing.”
Terry Dudley hunched his huge frame over the table, pushing his long, melancholy face next to Taylor’s. “I’m going into politics, Taylor. Finish up the Union work, do some network television, get good name exposure ... but I’ve got to be careful. First I’ll run for San Antonio mayor, then a statewide office—maybe railroad commissioner.” Terry leaned back and locked his long fingers behind his head. His arms jutted out like giant wings. “A couple of years regulating the oil companies on the railroad commission will give me enough in campaign contributions to run for governor or the US Senate ...”
“Then president,” Taylor interrupted, “and finally election for life as emperor of the Western Hemisphere.”
“I’m tall enough to be emperor.”
“How did you ever get tied up with Charlie Stillman?” Taylor wanted to know.
“He brought the deal to me. The network package. Everything.” Terry shook his head. “I know you don’t like him. Hell, I don’t like him, but it’s goddam big bucks they’re paying, and they are paying today. We need TV exposure and the money.”
“If you are ever going to be emperor.”
“Well,” Terry Dudley announced, banging his empty glass, “I am steering my course for the biggest spectator sport of all: politics.” Terry’s eyes twinkled in a sudden rush of humor. “And Spur has paid off in real-world contacts.”
“What real world? Hendrix is dead and the show’s canceled.”
Taylor stared at Terry. “You should be very nervous with the idea that Bobby Hendrix just happened to fall out of an airplane during labor-management talks,” he said. “You better be prepared, be
cause if you’re wrong about Charlie Stillman or the network, you could be dead wrong.” Taylor stood and stretched. “Now I’ve got to go tell a woman and two little boys that Daddy isn’t ever coming home again.”
Taylor left the bar to tell Ginny Hendrix the awful news.
Terry Dudley, his body scrunched into a tiny straight-backed wooden chair, watched his old college friend leave, then signaled the waiter for another double Herradura on the rocks. He drank alone until the bar closed, then went to his room.
Tapping a gram bottle on the dresser, the seven-foot Union director used a matchbook cover to scrape some white powder into two thick lines about two inches long. He quickly snorted the lines into his sinus cavities through a bar straw, wiped the white residue off the dresser top with a big bony finger and rubbed it on his gums.
He pulled a chair up to the window facing the dark ocean and, drinking from the tequila bottle in his lap, sat all night listening to the Caribbean, wondering about Bobby Hendrix and dreaming of being emperor of the Western Hemisphere.
KIMBALL AWASH
DRIVING BACK TO HIS hotel, Taylor stopped at the harbor, turning the rented topless Jeep so the one pitiful headlight shone across the water to the big cruiser that A.D. and Charlie Stillman had been aboard earlier in the evening.
The weak yellow light of the headlight dribbled across the water’s surface, fading quickly. Taylor pulled forward until the Jeep was at the breakwater’s edge, the front wheels dangerously close to rolling off the concrete. It was a twenty-foot drop to the ocean. The headlight flickered at the back of the boat, the roll of ocean putting the black painted name momentarily in the yellow beam, then snatching it away again. The big cruiser bobbed up and down. Slowly the word on the stern rebounded in the light to Taylor Rusk’s tequila-addled brain. It was such a simple name.
Momma, it read, Corpus Christi, Texas.
Momma. Corpus Christi. The body of Christ.
That night Taylor again told the two young boys about how he and Bobby had driven a tank from Texas to Germany to kill Hitler, stopping in Rome to kill Mussolini, then driving to New York and Washington to punch out the military-industrial complex.
Smiling peacefully, Bobby and Billy fell asleep as Uncle Taylor got to the part in the story where he and the boys’ dad and mom came back from the war and decided to invent football.
Anytime that night, when Bobby or Billy would ask a question—like “Who was Mussolini?”—Uncle Taylor told them to ask their mother. Later.
Down on the dark beach, several hundred yards from the hotel, Ginny Hendrix was crying and screaming their father’s name into the warm Caribbean wind. The slight breeze and surf drowned her cry completely. She knew she was screaming. She could feel the vibrations in her jawbone, the pain in her throat.
The next morning a hoarse Ginny Hendrix told the boys that their father was dead and gone.
Taylor ended up with a greater respect for the network guys by the time twenty-four hours had passed.
They showed up for Ginny and the boys at noon in the only clean black Cadillac four-door on the island. They wore business suits and took care of business. They knew how to be executives. They comforted the widow and orphans while every other son of a bitch in that hotel jumped when they snapped an order.
Overnight they had contacted Gus Savas in Houston and had taken him by private jet to Mérida, where he was with Bobby’s remains, waiting for his daughter and grandchildren to join him. Then the private jet would depart immediately for Houston. Normal customs and INS rituals had been waived by both governments.
The network guys were great at getting a dead man quietly out of Mexico, Taylor thought as he watched them hydroplane away from the hotel.
On the other hand, Taylor couldn’t get himself out of the country. So he went looking for Kimball Adams.
“It was your travel agency that booked these tickets,” Taylor said to the ex-quarterback when he found him two days later in a rundown bar south of town. “They won’t honor the ticket, Kimball. The airline says you paid with a revoked credit card.” Taylor waved the plane ticket.
Kimball did not appear to be listening or, for that matter, conscious. Taylor Rusk knew from past experience that Kimball was both conscious and listening. Kimball Adams had been drunk and awake since he heard that Bobby Hendrix had fallen out of the very plane Kimball had talked him into.
Kimball Adams was glad to talk about anything that could take his mind off the awful vision he had of what his ambition had created and destroyed. Anything. Talk about anything else. The expired credit card or about a game when he shaved points or the time he threw the interception and then blocked Ox Wood. Kimball would talk about anything to get his mind off Hendrix ... about how in the old days Ox always liked for him to put his cigarettes out on his tongue or about how, when he came to the Pistols, Red Kilroy picked Kimball out as a cheater and gave him two years to make Taylor Rusk the Franchise.
“You were sure Fresh Meat then, kid.” Kimball laughed and smiled. “You had a real godfather in Red; in the Old League we’d a chewed you up and spit you out.”
“It isn’t the Old League anymore, Kimball.”
“Don’t I know it.” Kimball grinned, his false teeth too white, too large.
“I want to go home,” Taylor said, tapping his fingernail on the red and white airline ticket.
“Jesus, man,” Kimball pleaded, “don’t leave me here alone. Your pal Dudley is gone, Stillman and the network guys are gone. The sons-a-bitches. Don’t leave yet. I want somebody to talk to.” Kimball’s face was dirty, unshaven, sweat-and tear-streaked. His eyes were red. Talking as fast as he could and smelling like alcohol, sweat, piss and fear. “The lousy bastards tell me it will be my big break in the travel agency business and then take my best friend up and drop him smooth out of the fucking plane. There wasn’t even no door on the son of a bitch, Taylor. No fucking door. Your typical goddam Mexican operation.”
Several dark-skinned men in the bar turned toward Kimball when he spit out the word Mexican with such obvious distaste. Kimball just glared back at them with the same crazed eyes that had frightened bigger, stronger, even smarter, men to that moment’s hesitation that is life or death.
“Yeah, I said goddam Mexican!” Kimball spit the words again. Quickly now. No doubt. Live or die. Or mind your business.
The brown-skinned men returned quickly to their own pursuits. Perhaps it was the Indians’ innate sensitivity toward madmen.
“There wasn’t a goddam door on the plane!” Kimball seemed to be pleading. “If I had known they weren’t gonna even have a door ... I know how scared he gets.... Goddam, man, I’m not stupid.... I wouldn’t have asked him to go.... Are you crazy?” Kimball seemed to answer a private inquisitor. “Am I crazy?” Kimball was drinking from a quart bottle of gin and crying then, heavy tears running through dirt and stubble. He was wearing a filthy yachting cap with Momma, Corpus Christi, TX stitched on the front. “I shouldn’t have let him get on that plane. He was so scared. He knew he was gonna die, but he went anyway ’cause I asked him to do it.”
It was eleven in the morning. The sun was just beginning to get hot.
Taylor’s skin felt clammy.
Kimball brushed at a fly crawling across his lip with the hand that held the bottle. He missed the fly and hit himself in the chin with the gin bottle. The fly flew to the ceiling.
“Why’d you take him to the airport?” Taylor winced at the sound of chin meeting gin bottle.
Kimball shook his head and gathered his thoughts. He had almost knocked himself out. He blinked a few times at Taylor. “Stillman told me the network guys wanted him at the airport and I should deliver him. There wasn’t room for me anyway. Stillman took the copilot’s seat and the big fat cameraman took up the whole port side of the plane. That left Bobby the seat right by the open door. They wanted him there so he would show up in the film of the Tulum ruins. Assholes, I hope they got their shot.”
“You ever talk to the netw
ork guys or Terry Dudley?”
Kimball shook his head and sweat rolled from beneath his dirty hairline down the back of his neck. He coughed and hawked and spit on the floor. Then glared the room full of Mexicans down again.
“Nobody ever talked to me about anything except Stillman, and now he’s gone.” Kimball coughed. “I called his hotel this morning. He checked out yesterday.”
“I guess we could call Stillman the producer,” Taylor said. “He said he was the producer.”
“Stillman gave me the crooked credit card.”
“You already knew the credit card was no good?” Taylor asked.
“Fresh Meat”—he looked directly at Taylor—“don’t you think I already tried to get off this motherfucking island myself?”
Kimball took a deep swallow of gin and some alcohol dribbled from his mouth, mixing with his tears. “Do I look like a complete fool? I can look in the mirror and see I ain’t stupid.” Kimball was arguing with his invisible interrogator. “What makes people think I’m so goddam dumb? Just ’cause I’m a football player?”
“It isn’t just because you’re a football player, Kimball.” Taylor got up and left the ticket on the table. “But being one sure doesn’t help much.” Taylor pointed at Kimball’s dirty yachting cap. “Whose boat is that in the harbor? Momma from Corpus Christi?”
“It belongs to the Cobianco brothers.... I don’t know how it got here or who’s on board.”
“You don’t want to know, Kimball.”
“They trick-fucked me, Fresh Meat,” Kimball said. He took off the hat and threw it out the window next to their table.
“I know. And they aren’t finished.” Taylor turned and walked out into the bright, hot Caribbean sun.
THE MOMMA,
CORPUS CHRISTI
TAYLOR DROVE THE rented Jeep north through town, back toward his hotel. The activity along the downtown waterfront had slowed with the midday heat. A few tourists wandered in their bright-colored shirts and shorts, their Japanese cameras strapped across their chests. At the harbor the replica of the Spanish galleon was gone, but the big white cruiser Momma was still moored, rolling slightly with the small Caribbean swells.