by Ted Bell
“I only drink on two occasions. When I’m alone or with somebody, Amen,” Hawke said, taking a sip of the dark liquid. “Will you join me in a glass?”
Amen smiled and shook his head.
“Haven’t had a drop since my first day here, near to fifty years now. Good Lord surrounds me with temptation, sees what I do. I sometimes imagine myself at the pearly gates. And maybe the Lord might say, ‘You’ve had a long trip, Amen. Would you like a drink?’”
Alex laughed and said, “I was wondering. Those pictures over there on that wall. How far do they go back?”
“’Bout fifty years or so, sir,” Amen said. “To the club’s most early days, I think, right after the war. I started working here, let me see, in forty-nine.” Hawke nodded silently, gazing at the wall. Strange, but he found himself studying the jumble of old photographs with solemn intensity. Almost as if he expected to find an old friend or relative amongst the countless strangers.
He caught Gloria’s eye. She had been standing at the window, watching Congreve and the two Russians stroll down the dock. She walked over, keeping her eyes on the floor, and handed him the handwritten chit. Hawke didn’t even look at it. He took her hand and pressed a folded hundred-pound note into it. He caught her gaze and held it.
“I don’t know what happened to you last night. But I’m the one who invited those two men to your island and so I feel responsible. I promise you this. They will never, ever bother you again.”
She looked up at him with gleaming eyes. “You’ll keep them away?”
“Actually, I plan to put them away,” Hawke said with a smile. “Now, you take care of yourself. Cut some fresh aloe and rub it into those abrasions.”
“I will,” she said, not looking up into his eyes.
Hawke paused once more before the wall of photographs on his way to the door. Spying a tiny Polaroid amidst the jumble, he found himself unthinkingly reaching up and plucking it from the wall. Without even looking at it, he stuck it in the breast pocket of his shirt, then walked out into the heat of the tropical sun.
At the end of the dock, the launch’s powerful twin engines rumbled in the somnolent afternoon. Congreve had raised the hydraulic engine hatch cover and was busy showing off the twin supercharged Rolls-Royce power plants to the Russians. Rasputin had climbed down into the engine room for a closer look.
“Giving away the latest of Her Majesty’s technology for free, eh, Constable?” Hawke said, looking down from the dock. Congreve guiltily pushed a button, and the big hatch cover started to close with a hydraulic hiss. The sight of the Russian scrambling out in the nick of time delighted Hawke.
“Everything shipshape?” Hawke asked Tommy Quick after he’d climbed down the ladder and stepped aboard.
“Aye, Skipper,” Quick said. “I’ve got snorkels, fins, and masks for everybody. Tide’s full in now, so the entrance to the grotto is submerged. About six feet below the surface. A few sharks milling about in the vicinity, but I shouldn’t worry about them, sir.”
“I shouldn’t worry about them either, Tommy, if, like you, I were remaining aboard the launch,” Hawke replied.
“Sorry, sir, I only meant—”
“Relax, Tom,” Hawke said, smiling. “Just a bad joke. Why is everyone so bloody touchy lately? Even that aged party Congreve. Somebody pour a wee dram of rum down his gullet for this epic voyage, please? And let’s shove off, shall we? It’s getting late.”
Hawke turned to the Russians now seated in the stern. “You chaps ever done any snorkeling? Great fun. You’re going to love it. Everybody all buckled in?”
Hawke relieved his helmsman and leaned on the twin-chromed throttles. In a second, the launch was up on a plane and screaming out of the Staniel Cay Marina, bound straight for Thunderball Island.
“Look back there, Ambrose,” Hawke shouted, pointing at the two fellows huddled behind them in the stern. “Not the hardy outdoors type, are they? No wonder they lost the stomach for the bloody Cold War.”
Congreve looked back at them. And, indeed, they’d both gone pale as ghosts.
“White Russians, I’d say, by the looks of them,” Congreve said, and Hawke couldn’t help laughing.
6
Petty Officer Third Class Rafael Eduardo Gomez, United States Navy, Guantánamo, had the shakes so badly he had to duck into a bar. He ordered a double brandy, beer back, and downed the jigger of brandy in two gulps. Which was perfectly okay except that it wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning yet and he had the most important meeting of his life in fifteen minutes.
But the brandy calmed his nerves all right. Yes, sir, it did! He swallowed the ice-cold beer in one long, Adam’s apple–bobbing gulp and slammed the empty mug down on the bar. Yes! Breakfast of champions.
It was the last day of his family emergency leave from Gitmo. He’d wangled this second leave by using his mother’s death in Havana. Said he had to go to Miami to tie up some important family business. At the last minute, he decided it’d be a good idea to take his family. Make a little holiday out of the thing. Quality time, his wife, Rita, called it. Time to get Rita off his ass for a couple of days, anyway.
It had been raining in Miami for forty-eight straight hours. So, since it was sunny today, he was supposed to be taking Rita and their two daughters to South Beach this morning. He’d promised, she’d reminded him.
“Something has come up,” he told Rita in the kitchen of his Aunt Nina’s apartment in Little Havana.
“Like what?” Rita said.
“Like something,” he replied. “A business deal. I can’t talk about it. It’s an idea my cousin Pablito has. We could make a lot of money, baby.”
“Your cousin, he just got out of jail last week! He misses prison so much already? You know, honey, maybe your cousin, he’s not into crime for the money! Maybe he likes—”
“What you saying? You saying my beloved cousin, he is a—”
That’s when he’d lost it. Slapped her hard enough to hurt. So much for quality time. She was still yelling at him when he slammed the kitchen door behind him and made a beeline over to Calle Ocho. It was the main street of Miami’s Cuban barrio. The two men he was meeting had told him to be at the San Cristóbal Café at eight sharp.
He walked in at one minute before, feeling good now, feeling the glow, baby. There was one old guy sitting at the counter sipping a café con leche and watching the waitress’s short skirt hike up as she bent over to fill an ice bucket; otherwise, the bodega was empty. So he was here first, which was good.
Basic military training. Do a little recon. Get the lay of the land. He was tempted to take a seat at the counter and recon the waitress bending over the ice machine. Incredible booty on this bitch and—no. This breakfast is strictly business, he had to remind himself. He took a seat at a table by the window where he could keep an eye on the door. He wanted to check out these two dudes before they checked him out.
He pulled out the folded Miami Herald he’d been told to bring and set it on the table open to the sports section, just like the guy had said. Frigging Dolphins. What were they, fourth in the division? Ever since Marino had retired—a large black shadow fell across his paper.
“Señor Gomez?” a big tall guy in a white guayabera said. Christ, he hadn’t even seen them walk in. So much for his recon and surveillance plan.
“That’s my name,” he said, trying to pull off a cocky grin but not too sure he had it working just right. Maybe the double brandy hadn’t been such a good idea. His teeth felt funny.
“Are you a Dolphin fan, señor?” asked the second guy, who was shorter than the first guy but way wider. This one was carrying a suitcase, a beat-up old gray Samsonite. Amazingly enough, it looked exactly like his own suitcase. Exactly. The guy put it on the floor very carefully and looked at Gomez, waiting for an answer.
Both of them badass, he could gather that much pretty quickly. Gooey hair. Big black sunglasses, heavy gold chains, Rolex watches with diamonds, all that Scarface shit.
“I used to be,” he said, trying to get it exactly right. “But now I root for the Yankees.”
The two Cuban badasses smiled and sat down across from him, and he knew he’d nailed the goddamn secret password thing. Nailed it. When you’re good, you’re good, that’s all there is to it.
“Your left hand. Show me,” Wideload said.
Gomez turned his palm up and showed him the two initials carved into his hand. Guy didn’t say anything, just nodded to the other guy.
“What does that stand for, anyway?” Gomez asked. “The MM? Is that Mao-Mao? Or is it, like, WW?”
They both looked at him like he was crazy.
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up and let us ask the questions, okay?” Wideload said. “We ask the questions. You answer the questions. Got that?”
“Okay, okay. Sorry. I was just wondering, you know, what it stood for. You guys have names, by any chance? Just curious.”
“Guy simply don’t understand English,” Wideload said, shaking his head.
“No. He speaks English okay. But he got the attention span of a fuckin’ moquito,” the tall guy said.
“Hey, wait a goddamn second,” Gomez said. “I don’t—”
“Shut up and listen. Okay?”
“Okay. Hey, I’m all ears.”
“That’s good. You want to do business? Shut your mouth for five seconds. It was us who spoke to you on the phone. I’m Julio. He’s Iglesias,” Tallboy said.
“Man,” Gomez said, slapping the table, “you guys are good. Code names and everything!”
“You believe this guy?” the tall one said.
“It’s not code, okay? Our names really are Julio and Iglesias,” the white guayabera said.
“Fine,” Gomez said, bobbing his head up and down. “Cool. Julio. Iglesias. Whatever. I’m down with that.”
“Give me a look at your newspaper,” Wideload said. Major Cuban accents here. Two heavy-duty hombres just off the boat from La Habana. A blind man could see that.
“All yours,” Gomez said, and slid the paper over to the guy.
The guy opened to the page where Gomez had stashed all the ID they’d asked for. His Navy papers, Florida driver’s license, Social Security. While one guy checked his ID, the other guy called the waitress over and ordered them all café con leches. Not that he’d do it, this was a business meeting, but a cold one at this point would really hit the spot.
She bent over to hand them all menus and gave everybody a perfect photo op of her lacy push-up Wonder Bra. Gomez almost came out of his seat. Perfect goddamn wonder breasts! Christ Jesus, he thought, how come this place was so empty? Forget the food, this waitress’s knockers alone ought to be packing them in. He was watching her rumba her ass on back to the kitchen when Wideload brought him back to reality.
“We were both saddened to hear of your mother’s passing,” the Cuban guy said, picking something out of his teeth with a gold toothpick.
“Yeah? How’d you know about that?” Gomez said. “Rodrigo tell you?”
“You’re smart, you never say that name again, señor. You’re not smart…well…”
Gomez just nodded, looking from one to the other, making sure they knew that he got the picture.
“Rodrigo?” he said, grinning. “Who the hell is Rodrigo?”
“You just said it again, asshole,” Wideload said. “Twice.”
“Hey, I was just—”
“How about you shut the fuck up while we finish looking at your papers, okay?”
It was just after he got back to the base after the little episode at the Mao-Mao Club that he’d gotten the phone call from these two guys. Before he left Havana, he’d gone back to the hospital and said his goodbyes to his mother. She was still wailing in pain when he’d walked out the door. He’d immediately split for Gitmo.
His mother died an hour after he left the hospital, Rita told him when he walked in the door.
Headed home to Gitmo he’d been sad and pissed about his hand, which stung like crazy, but what he really was, goddammit, was scared shitless about coming up with a hundred large. On the other hand, what could they do? Way he had it figured, if he never left the base, how could they get to him? Fact was, it didn’t take long.
They’d called his house at the base. Late the same night he got home from Havana. He’d been sitting in the kitchen drinking Budweiser tallboys. Crying some, thinking about his mom. The kids were asleep and his wife was upstairs watching some stupid movie. Two Cuban guys on the phone. They wanted to know did he have the money and when he’d be coming to Miami next to visit his Aunt Nina.
Some truly unbelievable shit, man.
They’d known her name, where she lived, everything. They said they’d heard a lot of good things about him and they wanted to hook up with him somewhere. Soon. Before his deadline ran out.
He told them right up front he didn’t have the money. Didn’t see any way of getting it in a week. Could he, maybe, get an extension? He had friends in Miami. He’d done a little dealing before he joined the Navy. Maybe he could work something out with some of his old pals. Seeing Rodrigo’s colorless eyes as he said it. Getting that really sick feeling in his stomach.
Like he really had a chance to score a hundred large in three days. Make that three lifetimes.
Then, a miracle. The more they talked the more he began to understand that they weren’t going to whack him for a chickenshit hundred G’s, after all! No, they had some kind of weird-assed business proposition for him! A deal that would not only erase the unfortunate debt he had gotten into in Havana, but a deal that would make him rich!
They said they wanted to meet up in Miami. They were sure he would find they had a proposition that would interest him greatly.
“Yeah, how greatly?” he’d asked the guy on the phone. He’d heard of these phone scams before. These guys sounded legit, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Is one million dollars greatly enough?” the guy said.
“One million dollars?” he said, almost choking on the figure. “Yeah, I’d say that was greatly.”
So he agreed to meet them and wangled the family emergency leave. Took his family to Miami. He’d listen to what they had to say. Hopefully, it wasn’t some con to get him off the base so they could waste him. He was a pretty good judge of character, though, and these guys sounded okay to him.
So, here he was, Johnny-on-the-spot at the San Cristóbal on Calle Ocho just like they told him. A million bucks? For that kind of money, he’d meet anybody. Friggin’ Adolf and friggin’ Hitler, man. Friggin’ Frank and friggin’ Sinatra, much less Julio and Iglesias here.
Who wants to be a millionaire? Petty Officer Third Class Rafael Gomez, that’s who.
He was starting to think that the chance meeting with Ling-Ling was the beginning of a major shift in his luck. Luck that, frankly, hadn’t been all that hot lately. Hadn’t been that great since high school, if you wanted the truth.
Gomez noticed they still hadn’t bothered to properly introduce themselves. Because they knew his real name, it bothered him a little. Probably the way these kinds of things went down, though. Less he knew the better, he figured, when and if the fit hit the shan. But, still—
“So let me skip the chase and cut directly to the outcome,” Gomez said, liking the way that had come out. “What exactly does a guy have to do around here to make a million bucks? What’s the plan, guys? And, since we’re going to maybe be in business together, let’s cut the crap. You guys have any, like, real names?”
“I am Julio,” Tallboy said. “Like we told you, amigo.”
“I am Iglesias,” Wideload said.
Gomez looked at them for a second, shaking his head. What were you going to do?
“Right, Julio and Iglesias. Okay, fine, and I’m Elvis and Presley. Split personality, get it? So, if it ain’t too much trouble, how about bringing me up to speed on what, exactly, is the big plan? You guys were kinda vague on the phone, know what I mean? Julio?”
�
�Necesario, señor. Is very simple plan, Señor Elvis,” Julio said with a smile. He had a gold tooth right up front that was catching the morning sun bouncing off the windows big time. Made it hard to concentrate on what the guy was saying. The tooth and the fact that there might be a million bucks in that suitcase.
“Simple is good,” Gomez said, feeling his heart pumping. He’d started shaking again, only from the inside out now. He was going to have to, what, whack somebody? Would he do that for a million smacks? Maybe.
He’d killed a guy once. Accident. Fed him to the gators late one night in the big ditch along Alligator Alley. Way the hell out the Tamiami Trail in the deep ’glades. Nobody ever knew nothing.
No biggie, he thought, remembering.
“Man, it’s hot in here. Anybody for a brewski?” They both shook their heads. “No? Man, I could go for one. Breakfast of champions, man, the King of Beers.”
Thing about these guys, no sense of humor whatsoever.
“All you have to do, Señor Presley, is take this fine piece of luggage home to Guantánamo with you tomorrow.” The guy picked up the suitcase and placed it on the table.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You guys aren’t going to believe this,” Gomez said, “but that suitcase looks exactly like my suitcase. Exactly.”
“Maybe that’s because it is your suitcase, señor,” Julio said.
“What? No way, man. My suitcase is under my bed at my aunt’s place.”
“Really? When was the last time you checked?”
Gomez looked at all the old stickers and shit on the Samsonite. Old United bag tags from when he was flying back and forth from Cecil Field, N.A.S. JAX all the time. Sonofabitch. It was his suitcase.
“What’s inside my suitcase, you don’t mind me asking?”
“It’s difficult to describe, señor,” Iglesias said. “You’ve heard of a Roach Motel?”
“Yeah. The bugs check in but they don’t check out.”
“Well, inside that suitcase is a kind of reverse Roach Motel,” Julio said.