by Dan Pollock
Jacqueline’s “leftovers” were pretty extensive, Sam thought, considering the probable price-per-square-foot in Lower Manhattan. High ceilings with whitewashed beams, gallery partitions, oak floors with area rugs that looked Central Asian. He could provide Teresa this kind of loft-studio, Sam thought, if only she’d let him.
Sam paused near the entry to admire several watercolors of English floral gardens. He could read the signature: Julienne Langlois.
“Mother wins prizes every year from some watercolor society or another,” Jacqueline explained. “She’s really good, isn’t she?”
Sam agreed, then pointed at a long, swirling turquoise abstract on the panel opposite. “Say, that looks like a Tolliver.”
“Sam, you are so hip. One of his miniatures, actually, and strictly a neighborly gesture on my part. But it’s starting to make me just a bit queasy.”
They passed through an open kitchen with a lot of stainless steel, acquiring a Dos Equis each, then continued through her tall-windowed living and dining space, on into an office and workroom. A long editing table held rewinds, racked film cans, Moviola and film bin, with strips of film hanging from hooks. At a right angle was portable video equipment—videotape recorder, monitor and mixing console.
“You do the whole editing process here?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I do the actual editing on computerized equipment at school. Mostly I’ve just been looking at everything I shot, storyboarding and making a zillion notes. A few minutes ago I was on the light table over there checking some slides Bernardo took at your ranch. They show me and Dr. Laya being interrogated by Captain Siso. Good stuff—if I was making an indictment of Proteus and the Venezuelan government. Trouble is, with Daddy suddenly changing his mind on Cerro Calvario and Caracas going along, I’ve lost my political edge.”
“Maybe you could leave out the happy ending. Just fade out on the bulldozers coming through the gates.”
“Honest, Sam, I am having a hard time figuring out what viewpoint to take. Objectivity seems so boring! Anyway, I can’t really decide yet. Not when I’ve got more stuff to shoot.”
“What’s left?”
“Didn’t you get your invitation? From Dr. Laya?”
“I’ve been on the road a few days.”
“One of his colleagues reconstructed that prehistoric bone flute and arranged some Indian melodies for it. They’re going to have a recital in a couple weeks—at Simón Bolívar University—with proceeds going to support the archaeological work on Cerro Calvario. I was thinking of documenting the recital, maybe even ending with it, and using the music as a film score. Anyway, I need footage of Dr. Laya back at the dig.”
Jacqueline paused, looked wistfully out the window. “The trouble is, I don’t have a date for the recital.”
“Well, golly, Missy, I’d be right pleased to take you.”
She batted her eyelashes. “You would?”
“Yes’m, I would. It just so happens that I would dearly love to hear that flute.” Sam dropped the aw-shucks drawl. “I’d especially love to hear it with you.”
“You know, I kind of hinted to Daddy I might be going down there with you.”
“I bet D.W. loved hearing that.”
“He grunted his blessing. He doesn’t detonate any more, you know. I really ought to arrange to be kidnapped from time to time, just to keep him tractable.”
“Well, it’s just a good thing your father already killed our friendship. It sure as hell wouldn’t have survived this.”
“Oh, Daddy’ll come around, you’ll see. Anyway, I really do want to go back to Venezuela, Sam. I think it’ll be—what’s the word I’m looking for? Purgative?”
“Cathartic maybe?”
“Maybe both.” She grinned and hooked his arm, steering him back to the dining room table where he’d left the gift. “I can’t wait any longer.”
“I was rather hoping you wouldn’t.”
She tore open the box, but lifted the contents out slowly. It was a palm-straw ranch hat, with rolled brim, black grosgrain hatband and chin strap, and a frontal spray of striped feathers.
“Sam, it’s perfect! You know, of all the stuff I lost in the Kallisto fire, the hat you bought me was what I missed most.”
“Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one with feathers from the Venezuelan sparrow hawk. So you’ll have to settle for pheasant quills and hackles. Unless you want to trade it in for one with a snakeskin band and a rattlesnake skull.”
“Ugh, no, thanks. Where did you find it?”
“Well, I started with Saks and Bergdorf’s and about every place else midtown this morning. But I wound up at a little western store just north of here, on Prince Street.”
“Mmm, I’ve window-shopped it.” Jacqueline unwound her topknot, shook out her glossy mane and slid the ranch hat back onto her head, tying the chinstrap in a bow. Then her dark eyes altered suddenly, swimming out of focus, while her eyelids grew heavy, lashes pressing together. The effect on Sam was mes-meric—an irresistible commandment to be kissed. He obeyed, placing his big palms on the satin-smooth cheeks of his urban cowgirl and his captive heart into the meeting of their lips.
It was almost a solemn kiss, full of withheld delight. Then, by gradual mutual consent, they eased out of it, leaving the promise wonderfully unfulfilled. While Sam stabilized his vital signs, Jake heaved her shoulders and adjusted the tilt of her hat.
“You know, if it wasn’t so darn cold out, we could go riding tomorrow in Central Park and I could wear my hat.”
“Do they still do that?”
“Of course, they do, silly. Strictly English saddles, though. Or maybe we could go ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Are you going to be—I mean, do you have business tomorrow?”
“I sure do.”
“What is it?”
“You.”
“Hmm. I like the sound of that. Where are you staying?”
“The Plaza.”
“Well, maybe you are and maybe you aren’t. We may not let you go back there.”
She said it flippantly, but its effect on Sam was considerable—enough that he swallowed his reply.
“Now,” she went on, “I know I promised on the phone to awe you with my homemade mostaccioli. But I’ve been cooped up all day, and I kind of told some friends we’d meet them at Arturo’s for a pizza around six-thirty. Would you mind?”
“Hell, no! Arturo’s? Gotta be my kind of place.”
“It’ll give me a chance to show you off. All I ask is, don’t be too judgmental.”
“Me, judgmental?” Sam grinned. “Well, now and then perhaps. Let me put it this way, Jake, if this makes any sense. I didn’t come up here to make judgments, or with any set of expectations. Except one—to see you. Period.”
“We’ll just have to play it by ear then, won’t we, darling Sam?”
“I guess that sounds about right.”
He helped her into a fuzzy magenta wool coat. And they went thumping back down the elevator and out onto the wintry street, arm in arm in their matching ranch hats.
*
Félix Rosales had violated one of the cardinal rules of the mariner: Never vomit to windward. Now thoroughly befouled, he was helped by two of the Mendes brothers around the prow of the forty-foot, steel-hulled fishing boat. And because the little Vasco da Gama was lifting and spanking heavily in the quartering Caribbean swell, the two brothers steadied him at the lee rail until he was done retching.
But when Félix slowly straightened up, gray-faced and groaning, they were still close by, both looking solicitous. Matteo and Felando—like their sister Marta—were compact and wiry, swarthy and hard-faced. Unlike her, they could be truly frightening.
“Feeling better now, brother-in-law?”
Félix nodded, then coughed, tasting his own bile. His entire musculature ached—and not from the vomiting. The brothers had just taken him below and given him the beating of his life.
“Then let me explain something,” Matteo continue
d, in a tone of utmost calm. “Marta does not know about our little talk this morning. She does not know you screwed that prostitute on the beach yesterday. But, for some reason, our foolish Marta loves you.
“So here is the way it will be. No more putas for you, Félix. None, you understand me? No more stealing things, as you did from the archaeologist. Now, here is what you will do. You will treat our little sister like the Queen of Portugal. You will kiss her tiny feet, if she wishes. If we ever hear that you have made her unhappy, Felando and I will not be so gentle with you as today.
“And if you run away, believe me, brother-in-law, we will hunt you down and bring you back. Or perhaps we will just cut off your huevos and bring them back to Marta, with our condolences. But, believe me, you will not be as hard to find as you may think, Muscleboy.” Matteo gave Félix’s biceps a brutal squeeze with his fisherman’s grip. “The Mendes brothers have many, many friends—in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and all through the Caribbean.
“Now, please clean yourself and prepare to use all those pretty muscles to do a real man’s work. We have many langosta pots to raise this morning.”
With this, Matteo and Felando strolled aft toward the helm, where another brother, Juan, was holding a course parallel to the cliffs of Cachimena west of Cumaná.
Felix, who had let go the rail during Matteo’s discourse, now regripped it and bent forward. He had been watching the gray, wave-peaked horizon slowly rising and falling and was about to be horribly sick again. This time he didn’t know if it was caused by the beating or the threats or the endlessly heaving sea. And, for the moment, he didn’t care.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Pollock was born in New York City to a family of writers and grew up in Laguna Beach, California. A former syndicate editor with the Los Angeles Times, Pollock is the author of three thriller novels in addition to Orinoco—Lair of the Fox, Duel of Assassins and The Running Boy—and a specially commissioned “logistics” thriller, Precipice.
With his wife, Constance, he has edited and published three literary, inspirational volumes: The Book of Uncommon Prayer; Gospel: The Life of Jesus as Told by the World’s Great Writers; and Visions of the Afterlife: Heaven, Hell and Revelation as Viewed by the World’s Great Writers.
The Pollocks live in Southern California with their two children
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