He went outside again and picked his way down to the bay, where more offal floated in the water. There was a rotting dock, the piles covered with slime and a thick crust of barnacles. There was no beach worth the name; just garbage-choked water lapping at garbage-clotted land.
“I’ll bet Garcia and his laughing boys are using it for a drug drop,” Donohue said. “A mother ship comes up the coast from Central or South America. It’s in International Waters, so the Coast Guard can’t touch it. Small boats go out at night and the cargo is off-loaded. Or maybe they just dump it overboard in waterproof bales. The small boats pick it up and run it in. That cruddy dock would be a perfect place to unload the small boats and transfer the grass and coke to vans and trucks.”
“Well … what do you think?” I asked him. “How safe is it?”
He shrugged. “Not perfect—but what is? The thing I like about it is that there’s only one narrow road coming up to that front gate. There’s no way to get to the place except by that road. What I figure we’ll do is get there an hour or two before the meet. We’ll go through every room to make sure no one’s been planted to wait for us and then jump out and shout ‘Surprise!’ Then, if it really is empty, we’ll pull out and watch the place from a distance through my binocs. If one car pulls up, and only two guys get out, then we’ll go in. But while we’re in there, one of us will be watching that road all the time. Another car comes anywhere near and we take off.”
“Then what?”
“We play it by ear,” he said. “We’re going in there with enough guns to take Fort Knox.”
“All right,” I said, “suppose this Garcia is there with the passport forger, just like he promised. We hand over the necklace and he gives us the papers. When do we get on the plane?”
“He said he’d tell us when we hand over the rocks.”
I groaned. “Jack,” I said, “there’s a dozen ways he could cross us.”
“A dozen? I can think of a hundred! The papers can be so lousy they wouldn’t fool a desk clerk. Garcia and his paperman can pull iron on us. They can let us go and mousetrap us on the road out. Maybe the plane will be rigged to blow up over the water. Maybe the pilot will bail out after takeoff and just wave goodbye. Maybe we’re being set up on the other end. We step off the plane in Costa Rica and the whole goddamned army is waiting for us. Jesus Christ, Jan, if they want to cross us, they can do it. You want to call it off? I haven’t phoned Garcia yet.”
I thought a long time, trying to figure the best thing to do. But there was no “best thing,” no right choice. All our options were dangerous, all possibilities tainted.
“I told you,” Donohue said, “if you want to take half the ice and split, that’s up to you. I won’t try to stop you.”
“No,” I said, “I’ll stick with you. But if we don’t go for this Costa Rica deal, then what?”
“You know what,” he said grimly. “We go on the run again, maybe across country to L.A. Never staying more than a few days in one place. Trying to keep a step ahead of Rossi and the Feds. Prying out stones and peddling them when our cash runs out. Is that what you want?”
I had a sudden dread vision of what that life would be like.
“No,” I said, “I couldn’t stand that. There’s no chance at all that way. The Feds or the Corporation would catch up with us eventually; I know they would. All right, Jack. Call Garcia and tell him it’s on.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said, patting my cheek. “You’ll see.”
“Sure.”
Donohue called the Paco number in Miami. He spoke a short time in guarded phrases. That day was Tuesday. The meet was set for 3:00 P.M. on Thursday. That would give us time to have passport photos made. After we handed over the necklace and received our new identification papers, Garcia would give us the details of where and when to board the plane for the flight to Costa Rica.
After Jack hung up, we started on a bottle of vodka. Neither of us felt like eating. I suppose we were too keyed up. Read “frightened” for “keyed up.” Anyway, we drank steadily, talking all the time in bright, hysterical voices, laughing sometimes, choking on our own bright ideas.
What we were trying to do was to imagine every possible way Manuel Garcia could betray us and what we could do to prevent it. We devised what we thought were wise precautions and counterploys. We had no intention of crossing Garcia. We would play it straight. All we wanted to do was stay alive.
When we finally fell into bed around midnight, we were too mentally and emotionally exhausted to have any interest in sex. All we could do was hold each other, shivering occasionally.
We listened to the storm outside, heard the lash of rain and the smash of thunder, saw the room light up with a bluish glare when lightning crackled overhead.
That’s the way we fell asleep, hearing the world crack apart.
The next day the thunder and lightning had ceased, but the sky was low and leaden. Vicious rain squalls swept in from the southeast. Even when it wasn’t raining, the air seemed supersaturated. My face felt clammy, fabrics were limp and damp. Water globules clung to the hood of the Cutlass, and all the cars on the road had their headlights on and wipers going.
We got rid of all the last possessions of Hymie Gore and Dick Fleming. We found a place that took passport photos and waited there until they were processed and printed. We bought a few things we thought might be hard to find in Costa Rica: aspirin, vitamin pills, suntan lotion, water purification tablets—things like that. We really had no idea of what the country was like, where we would be living, what modern conveniences might be available. We were emigrants setting out for an unknown land.
In the evening we continued our packing, trying to discard everything not absolutely essential. Winter garments from up north were eliminated: gloves, scarves, knitted hats, wool skirts and shirts. We set aside the necklace we would deliver to Manuel Garcia and selected another we thought of equal value. It was about then we got into a brutal argument. It was about time; our nerves were twanging.
On the following day, Thursday, when we left for our meeting with Garcia at the deserted hotel, Jack Donohue wanted to take all our luggage (including the Brandenberg loot) in the Oldsmobile, checking out of Rip’s.
I said that was foolish. If we were bushwhacked at the hotel, we stood to lose everything. The smart thing to do, I said, was to go armed, taking only the single necklace we had promised. If everything went according to plan, we could then return to Rip’s and load up before we departed to board the plane.
“Listen,” Donohue said, “we’ve got to allow at least an hour for the trip from here to the hotel. What if we deliver the rocks and Garcia says we’ve got to get on the plane right away? Then where are we? No time to come back here and pick up our stuff.”
“Then we’ll stall,” I said. “Tell him no deal. Tell him we need at least two hours to get our luggage.”
“Jesus Christ!” he said angrily, “you think they run these Mickey Mouse flights on a regular schedule? We get on the plane they’ve got lined up at the time they say or we don’t go at all.”
“Then we don’t go at all!” I said, just as furiously. “We’re not walking into that lion’s den carrying everything we own. That’s just plain stupid. We’ll go down there with—”
“We’ll!” he shouted. “We’ll do this. We won’t do that. Who the hell voted you the great brain? I call the shots!”
“In a pig’s ass you do!” I yelled, spluttering in an effort to get it all out. “You really did a swell job of calling the shots, you did! Heading for Miami when every cop in the country knew it was your home base. Getting Hymie and Dick killed because of some nutty dream that you’d be treated like King Tut once you got to Miami. And then you discover they don’t want to know you.”
“You think I couldn’t have made it if it hadn’t been for you?” he screamed, white with fury. “Fucking woman! I had to nurse you along, hold your hand while you jumped a roof a ten-year-old kid could have stepped across. You’v
e been a goddamned jinx. You and Fleming. All the way. Without you two schmucks, I’d have been out of the country right now, living high off the hog. What an idiot I was! I should have known better. I should have ditched the two of you in New York. Left you for Rossi to take care of. You’ve been nothing but trouble. You junked me up. And now you’re telling me how to run things? Take off. Go on, beat it. I’m sick of the sight of you.”
“You shithead!” I said. “You’re going to get yourself killed. Go ahead. I couldn’t care less. You’ve got no goddamned brains. Go on. Take all the stuff to Garcia and just hand it over. ‘Here it is, Mr. Garcia, and I hope it’s enough.’ And don’t forget to kiss his ass. But include me out, you fucking peasant!”
We stood there trembling, glaring at each other. I think if one of us had said another word, we would have been at each other’s throats. Perhaps we both knew it; because we said nothing. Just bristled. Then Jack turned away. He walked to the window. He thrust his hands into his pockets. He stood there, staring out at the rain-whipped night.
I slumped into a chair, leaned back. I stretched out my legs. I lighted a cigarette with shaking fingers. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking at all. Just trying to regain control. Telling myself it was nerves. That’s all: just nerves. But I hadn’t cried, I reminded myself grimly. I was proud of that: I hadn’t wept.
Jack Donohue spoke first. He was still staring out the window, his back to me. And he spoke in such a low voice I could hardly hear him.
“That week at Mrs. Pearl’s,” he said. “You and Dick and me. Together. That was the happiest time I ever had in my whole miserable life.”
I stubbed out my cigarette. I rose and went to him. I took him by the shoulders and turned him so that we were facing. Close. Staring into each other’s eyes.
“It was the happiest time for me, too,” I told him. “Absolutely the happiest. No matter what happens we had that, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” he said wonderingly. “That’s right. We had that. No matter what happens.”
He sighed deeply. “We’ll do it your way, Jan. We’ll go down there tomorrow with just the one necklace. Fuck ’em. We’ll get on that goddamned plane when we want to. We’re paying for it.”
“Whatever you say, Jack,” I said gently. “You’re the boss.”
The rain had stopped by Thursday morning, but a clumpy fog had moved in. It was like living in a murky fishbowl. We could hear the ocean but couldn’t see it. When we walked down to Atlantic Boulevard for a pancake breakfast, we saw a dead pelican on the road, all bloodied and muddied. A great way to start the most important day in our lives.
Back at the motel, Jack cleaned and reloaded the guns we’d take: a pistol in his raincoat pocket, a revolver in his belt. Another pistol concealed in the car. I would carry a pistol in my raincoat pocket and a small revolver in my shoulder bag.
“Babe,” Jack said, “if you have to blast—you won’t, but if you have to—don’t, for Christ’s sake, take the time to pull the iron out of your pocket first. Just aim as best you can and blow right through the raincoat. It may catch on fire, but that’ll be the least of our worries. Keep your hand on the shooter in your pocket every minute we’re in there. Got it?”
“Got it.”
We started out at noon, paused to gas up, then went south on Federal Highway #1. Jack was driving, leaning forward to peer through the murk. Traffic was moving very slowly; most of the cars had their lights on.
After we got below Golden Shores, I couldn’t follow the twists and turns Donohue was taking, except that I knew we were off Federal and generally heading eastward. There were no road markers. We seemed to be passing through an area of tidal flats, vacant fields, and fenced lots choked with palmettos, scrub pines, and yellow grass.
“You’re sure you know—” I began.
“Don’t worry,” Donohue said tensely. “I know.”
He did, too. We finally turned into a single-lane road. It might have been tarred originally, but now it showed bald patches of sodden earth and weeds sprouting from cracks. We followed the lazy curves, going slowly. Then, on the right-hand side, I saw a chainlink fence, bent, dented, and rusted.
“That’s it,” Jack said. “This is the only road in, the only road out.”
We came up to the sagging gate and stopped.
“Take a look,” he said.
I looked. In that swirling fog, the hotel was a ghosts’ mansion. It was silvered with age, glistening with damp, and it loomed. That’s the only way I can describe it: It loomed through the mist, enlarged and menacing. I saw black birds circling and darting into upper windows. I saw the nude grounds, puddled, still shining from the past two days’ rain.
I tried to imagine how it had been, white and glittering, a place for ladies in long gowns with parasols and men with straw boaters and high, starched collars. People laughing and moving slowly along brick walks under lush palm trees. I tried to imagine all this but I couldn’t. It was all gone.
“Think they’ve got a suite for us?” I said, laughing nervously. “Two rooms with a view?”
“Let’s go take a look.”
We got out of the car and crawled carefully through a cut in the fence. We tried to avoid the puddles, but the ground squished beneath our steps. My shoes were soaked through before we got to the porch.
We stepped up the rotting stairs, keeping close to the sides where the sag wasn’t so apparent. Then I smelled it.
“Jesus!” I breathed.
“Yeah,” Donohue said. “And it’s worse inside. Breathe through your mouth.”
We went in through one of those broken French doors. It was just as Jack had described it: soaked garbage, offal, all the detritus of a dwelling place abandoned and left open. We went up to the fourth floor, the top except for an attic that appeared open to the lowering sky.
We sent colonies of birds into a flurry of activity. I was certain I heard the scamper of rats. And once I did see a small snake slither behind a baseboard.
We looked hastily into every room, not a difficult job since most of the doors had been removed. There was evidence, as Jack had said, of pot and bottle parties, of fires and wanton destruction, of the terrible inroads age makes. On buildings. On people. Everything goes.
Back on the ground floor, we wandered about until Jack selected a large, high-ceilinged chamber that had probably been the dining room. Broken French doors opened out onto the sagging porch and a side terrace. Most important, from two sides we had a good view of the access road. We could see our own car dimly, parked at the gate.
“This is where we’ll meet,” Donohue decided. “I’ll do the talking. I mean,” he added hastily, “if you want to say anything, you say it. But mostly you keep an eye on that road beyond the gate. You see another car pulling up, or anything fishy, you let me know.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll scream.”
“Good.” He looked at his watch. “We got a little more than an hour. We’ll go back to the junction and park where we can watch who comes in.”
And that’s what we did, retracing that cracked road until we came to the paved junction that, Donohue told me, led eventually back to the Federal Highway. We were in a neighborhood of one-story cinderblock homes, some with front yards of green gravel, a few with boats on trailers in their garage driveways.
We parked there, settled down, lighted cigarettes, and waited. Jack had brought his binoculars, but they were of no use. That misty fog was still so thick we could see no more than twenty or thirty yards. But we could make out the turnoff to that road leading to the deserted hotel.
Sitting there, closed around by the fog, swaddled in silence, we talked slowly in murmurs. Jack wanted to know all about my life. Mostly my childhood. Where I had been born, where I lived, the places I had visited.
But mainly he wanted to know how I had lived when I was growing up. How many rooms did our various homes have? Did we have servants? How many cars did we own? Did we belong to a country club
? Did I attend private schools? How much money did my parents spend on my clothes? What kind of presents did I get for Christmas?
It wasn’t just curiosity, I knew; it was a hunger. He wanted a firsthand view into a world he coveted, a vision of moneyed ease. He saw it as a life in sunlight. Beautiful women and handsome men sat around on a seafront terrace, sipped champagne and nibbled caviar served by smiling servants. It was class.
I didn’t have the heart to disabuse him. So I embellished my descriptions of what childhood was like when there was money for everything, people were polite and kind, and life was a golden dream in which every wish was granted. He kept smiling and nodding away, as if what I told him was no more than he had envisioned. I wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t imagined a thousand times. There was a world like that; he knew it, and he couldn’t get enough of it.
But then, a few minutes after three, he straightened up behind the wheel.
“Car coming,” he said in a tight voice.
We both leaned forward, squinting through the fogged windshield. It was a big black car, a Cadillac, and it came to the access road, slowed, then made the turn.
“How many men did you see?” Donohue demanded.
“Two. In the front seat.”
“That’s what I saw. We’ll follow them in.”
He started up. We turned into the tarred road leading to the hotel. The black car ahead of us was lost in the mist. We found it parked outside the gate in the chainlink fence. We saw two men picking their way across the littered grounds to the hotel.
Jack grunted with satisfaction.
“The short guy is Garcia,” he said. “I’m sure of that. The tall gink must be the paperman. We’ll wait till they get inside.”
When the two men disappeared into the hotel, Jack pulled up ahead of the Cadillac. Then, with much backing and hard cramping of the wheel, he turned the Cutlass around until we were heading back the way we had come, away from the hotel. Then we got out of the car. Donohue left the key in the ignition and the doors unlocked.
“Just in case we wish to depart swiftly,” he said with a thin smile.
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