by Lou Cameron
Captain Gringo laughed and said, “Now I know I’d better cash that check. I don’t want you blowing my half, no matter how good they blow at that steam bath of yours!”
Gaston handed it over as they went down the arcade to the barber shop. They got cleaned up for pennies in American terms, and the simple linens they replaced their trail-worn duds with cost little more than denims would have back in the States. As they lit new Havana claros out front, Gaston counted his change, shrugged, and said, “Well, maybe one masseuse will be enough. The usual hotel, later?”
“Right. It’s better to check in separately. Some of those latest reward posters mention us running in pairs. Meet me in the bar around nine, or, if either of us get lucky, I’ll see you for lunch mañana.”
They split up, Gaston heading for his notorious steam bath, as they called it, and Captain Gringo heading for the cable office.
Costa Rica was one of the few places he didn’t have to worry about meeting cops staked out in public places. He was looking forward to a long visit, if this check didn’t bounce. The only fly in the ointment of San José was that the local government here was too easygoing and stable for a knock-around guy to make a living with a gun.
The cable-office lady executive he knew, in the biblical sense, wasn’t in. She’d taken off for the weekend, too, dammit. Captain Gringo didn’t try to cash the foreign check with any of the snippy-looking dudes on duty there that afternoon.
As he turned to leave, he noticed a nice-looking redhead, dressed like an American Gibson Girl who planned on playing tennis in the near future. She had to be a gringa. It wasn’t his problem. At least, it wasn’t his problem until she followed him out of the cable office and called his name.
He stopped, turned, and ticked the brim of his new planter’s hat as she smiled up at him. He asked, “Do I know you, ma’am?”
She said, “Call me Vera, Dick. It’s silly to make up fictitious last names, don’t you agree?”
“Yeah. Your accent gives you away as a Brit. I sure hope you’re not from British intelligence, Vera.”
“Lloyds of London. An underwriter for Lloyds, and I’d rather not go into it, I’ve been expecting you to show up here. You see, we know about the cashier’s check that poor Portola gave you.”
“I hope when you call El Generale poor you don’t mean he hasn’t got the money to cover said check, doll!”
“He’s dead. Some maniac named Morales assassinated him the other day for reasons the powers that be are still working on. The general’s bodyguard blew the assassin away before anyone could question him. If you try to cash that mysterious check the general gave you, who knows who might want to question you, Dick?”
He frowned down at her and asked, “Why is Lloyds of London so worried about my health, Vera? I don’t remember taking out a policy with any insurance company lately!”
She laughed, locked her arm in his, and said, “You’d play hell getting anyone to insure your life at the moment. But we do want to pay you off. Come with me. I’m staying near here. I have your agreed-on price and the promised bonus as well, in cash, waiting for you there.”
He didn’t argue. He let her lead him meek as a lamb to slaughter as she went on explaining. She said, “We’re an insurance company, not a charitable organization, so naturally we want some small favors from you and Gaston Verrier.”
“Naturally. Who does Lloyds of London want bumped off?”
She laughed and said, “You two already did quite a job on the scamps who were trying to take advantage of us, Dick. The first thing you do when I give you the money will be to tear up that check, agreed?”
“That sounds reasonable. I wouldn’t have been able to paste this check in my scrapbook as a keepsake no matter who cashed it. Get to the second line of the fine print, doll.”
She led him around a corner and into a narrower side street as she told him, “By Monday the international press should be carrying full details of the terrible volcanic eruption, earthquake, and flood you lived through, poor baby. The first reports were confusing and conflicting, but this morning a British engineer named Palmer cabled from Greytown, reporting the way everyone had ignored his warnings about Mount Pocopoco.”
Captain Gringo laughed and said, “Palmer was nowhere near the site when we took it out, and he was wrong about the volcano. Pocopoco never blew. I expected it to, after the shaking we gave the whole area, but—”
“You’re not listening, dear,” she cut in, adding, “C.C., Limited, took out a heavy policy insuring them against failure to complete that dam. They offered a pretty premium. But even so, our underwriters didn’t want to go for it at first. After all, building a dam in earthquake country in the middle of a civil war does sound a bit risky, eh what?”
“But you did insure them, in the end.”
It had been a statement, but the redhead took it as a question and explained, “Not fully. Our underwriters said they could insure the site against acts of war or acts of God, but hardly both! The company took the word of their own geologists and settled for war coverage. Is a picture emerging from the mists yet, dear?”
He laughed and said, “If the London Times says it was an act of God, who am I to argue? Now that I think back, Gaston and me were nowhere near the place when whatever happened, happened.”
She said he was learning, and led him into a patio through an archway. He didn’t see anybody pointing a gun at him from the shuttered windows all around, but that reminded him of other questions, so he asked her, “How come your agents in Greytown tried to stop us from signing on as hired guns for the outfit, if you didn’t want them wiped out by an act of war?”
She hesitated, then said, “My, you do play chess, don’t you? All right, Dick, since it’s over, you may as well know. We didn’t want you anywhere near that dam site, no matter which side you started out working for. We were afraid that once you saw that the little people you seem so fond of were going to be flooded out with no compensation by the project, you’d do, ah, just about what you did. But all’s well that ends well. So now we can all be friends, eh what?”
She led the way to an oak door set in the far stucco wall of the patio. As she unlocked it, she explained, “Your money’s waiting on the bed inside. I didn’t want to chance carrying so much cash on me. So …”
And then Captain Gringo stiff-armed her through the doorway, hard, and followed her into the darker shade, fast, whipping out his .38 with the other hand. He dropped to one knee and kicked the door shut behind him with his boot heel before crabbing to one side, ready for whatever came next.
The redhead lay sprawled across the bed in the center of the room, face down and skirts up around her hips as money fluttered down like confetti on and about her bare fanny. There was nobody else in the one rented room.
He got to his feet, putting the .38 away as he said, “Sorry. Once upon a time a lady told me a fib and I’ve never gotten over it.”
Vera rolled over and sat up, leaving her skirts up around her hips. He supposed she might be feeling the effects of the tropics, even though she wore no underwear under that thin white dress. She smiled up at him uneasily and said, “Heavens! Anyone can see it’s cheaper to pay a man like you off than it would be to kill him!”
“That’s true. Even if this had been a setup, and even if it had worked, you kiddies would still have Gaston to deal with, and he showed you in Greytown that he’s tougher than he looks, right?”
She nodded eagerly and said, “That’s what I just said! You and Gaston Verrier are dangerous to mess with, you just saved my company millions in any case, so I was told to pay you off, get you to agree about the cover story about the washed-out dam on the Dorado and … Why are you looking at me like that, Dick? I’m an insurance adjuster, not a lady gunslick, and you’re frightening me with that cynical smile and knowing eyebrow! I swear I’ve nothing up my sleeve. I swear what you see is what you get, and, oh dear, how can I convince you I only want to be your friend?”
He r
eached behind him to lock the door latch as he told her, in a much friendlier tone, “Oh, I’m sure we’ll think of something, once we put our heads together.”
RENEGADE 21
RIVER OF REVENGE
By Ramsay Thorne
First Published in 1983 by Warner Books
Copyright © 1983, 2017 by Lou Cameron
First Smashword Edition: March 2017
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
Guest Editor: David Whitehead
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.
The Renegade Series by Lou Cameron,
Writing as Ramsay Thorne
Renegade
Blood Runner
The Fear Merchant
Death Hunter
Macumba Killer
Panama Gunner
Death in High Places
Over the Andes to Hell
Hell Raider
The Great Game
Citadel of Death
The Badlands Brigade
The Mahogany Pirates
Harvest of Death
Terror Trail
Mexican Marauder
Slaughter in Sinaloa
Cavern of Doom
Hellfire in Honduras
Shots at Sunrise
River of Revenge
… And more to come every month!
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