by Lou Berney
What am I doing here?
It wasn’t the first time, in the past twelve or so hours, Ted had asked himself this question. It was more like, like, the two-hundredth time.
He thought about Vivian. He tried not to think about Vivian.
He wanted nothing more, right now, than to lay his forehead down against the tabletop in this restaurant in Panama and not feel—thinking of Vivian, gone forever, twenty-six months now—like he was going to have diarrhea.
What am I doing here?
He’d asked that on the plane. In the van on the way to the hotel. Just about constantly throughout the entire duration of the lunch orientation. The Building Bridges “facilitator” was a guy named Frank who spent the first part of the orientation detailing his professional background. He had been a successful golf pro, a successful home builder and developer, and a successful radio talk-show host. Frank explained that the orientation was to illustrate vividly that groups like Building Bridges, popular misconceptions aside, weren’t for losers. They were for quality individuals. Guys who knew what they wanted and weren’t afraid to “move the ball down the field.”
A lot of the other guys nodded. Ted’s friend, George Pirtle—his, really, acquaintance, George—nodded and said, “Amen, brother.”
This was George’s third “tour of duty,” as George called it, with Building Bridges. He’d been to Thailand and the Ukraine, too.
Ted knew George from work. Ted was the marketing director for the Oklahoma City Convention & Visitors Bureau. He had the thankless and surprisingly low-paid task of trying to lure conventions and visitors to a city that, while a nice place to live, really had nothing much to entice conventions and visitors, at least not compared to places like Las Vegas or even Dallas. George was a member of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, of which the Convention & Visitors Bureau was a subsidiary component. George had come to Ted a few months ago with a scheme to lure Chinese tourists to Oklahoma City, now that tourism restrictions in China had been lifted. It had involved cat food and the construction of a frontier cattle town in the vein of Colonial Williamsburg.
“These gals you’re going to meet,” said Frank, the facilitator, at the lunch orientation, “they’re very, very different from the women back home.”
“Amen, brother.”
“They appreciate a man for what’s on the inside. Not how fat he is or bald or does he have six-pack abs. They don’t care if you make a hundred K a year or not.”
George had talked him into this trip by hammering away at Ted until Ted had the epiphany that George wasn’t ever going to stop hammering away, ever, unless Ted said okay. So Ted said okay. He was too exhausted to face the alternative; he’d only been sleeping a few hours a night since he’d lost Vivian.
“Good,” George had said when Ted finally said okay. George’s tone was suddenly quiet and serious. “You’ve got to move on with your life, Ted.”
Ted supposed that was right.
Frank the facilitator had told them, with a sly smile, that while old-fashioned in all the good ways, these Latina gals were also adventurous in the boudoir, if you knew what Frank meant, much more open-minded than the women back home.
Almost all the men in the group were grinning and nodding.
What am I doing here?
At that point of the lunch orientation, Ted had seriously considered slipping out of the banquet room and catching a cab back to the airport. But then he started thinking about Vivian again, and before he could rouse himself to action, fifty or sixty Latina women filed into the banquet room for the first of the four mixers, the Day One Happy Hour Mix-N-Mingle.
Frank had assured them that at the mixers the ratio of potential Latina marriage partners to quality American individuals would never be less than three to one, and usually even better than that.
Most of the Latina women, Ted guessed, were in their twenties. Most of the men in the Building Bridges group were in their forties or fifties. There were several guys who looked a lot older. Ted was one of the youngest, at thirty-four.
The women weren’t allowed to approach the men, so the men moved from table to table at their own pace and discretion. Four women sat waiting at each table.
Like the stations of the cross, Ted heard one guy say with a grin, and all the guys around him laughed.
There weren’t enough translators to go around, about one to every three tables, but Frank the facilitator assured everyone that communication—“real communication, I’m talking about, not just words”—wouldn’t be a problem.
Ted should have slipped out of the banquet room when he had the chance. Once the women arrived, though, he found himself swept along—story of his life—in the inexorable current of activity, found himself swept into a hotel shuttle van with a group of guys and Latina women, found himself swept along on a self-guided walking tour of the old town, found himself finally at dinner in an almost-empty restaurant with a “date” George had insisted on asking out to dinner for him.
What am I doing here?
Nerlides, his “date,” returned from the ladies’ room. Ted stood politely up. Nerlides laughed like this was the funniest thing in the world.
“Hubba, hubba,” George had whispered to him during the walking tour, after Nerlides without any sort of preface had linked her arm through Ted’s.
Ted supposed Nerlides could be considered attractive. He knew that a lot of men liked the kind of body she had. But she also frightened him a little. Her eyes never really seemed to focus, and she laughed an awful lot. On the walking tour, she’d laughed and pointed when they passed a dog that had been run over by a car.
The waiter at the bar was really glaring at Ted now. It was definitely not his imagination. He wondered if the waiter thought Nerlides was a prostitute.
She talked loudly and constantly, all in Spanish. She was, Ted thought he gathered, from Cartagena, Colombia, not Panama. Occasionally he would catch an English word or two. “Shopping,” several times. “Breast revision,” once.
Was she? Ted wondered, alarmed. A prostitute?
What am I doing here?
He was resolved. This was it. He’d ask for the check and bid Nerlides, politely, good night. He’d take a cab back to the hotel and pack and call the airline and fly home first thing in the morning, even if doing so cost him a fortune to change his ticket and he lost the deposit he’d already put down with Building Bridges. Ted didn’t care. He was tired of being swept along with the current. He was not going to marry this woman and pay for her breast revision, whatever that was.
He didn’t have to move on with his life. He didn’t have to pretend Vivian had never been a part, the better part, of the better part of his life. And he definitely wasn’t going to submit George’s stupid proposal for a fake frontier cattle town to his boss, no matter how George hammered at him about all the Chinese tourists who were just dying to come to Oklahoma City.
What am I doing here?
I’m leaving, that’s what.
Ted Boxman felt a lot better. He motioned to the waiter and reached for his wallet.
CASCO VIEJO REMINDED SHAKE of pictures he’d seen of Havana, Cuba. Charm and crumble in equal measure. Paint peeling from buildings the colors of the tropical rainbow, guava and mango and papaya. Cobblestone streets, wooden shutters, and wrought-iron balconies. Old churches and wet laundry strung between windows. What the French Quarter in New Orleans might once have looked like, long before Shake’s time, before the titty clubs and T-shirt shops and two-for-one Hurricanes in commemorative glasses.
A girl in a bright mango dress leaned over a third-floor balcony and dropped a coin to her little brother on the street below, expertly threading the snarl of electrical wires between them. The little brother caught the coin and ran off toward a snow-cone vendor down the street.
The restaurant was in a restored colonial building. Wooden tables and white stucco walls, the kitchen out in the open under a copper smoke hood. Shake was relieved. It was a beautiful place
, as promised, but not in the way that would have made him worry about the food.
Walking to their table, he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. Shake couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a suit, let alone a suit that fit properly. He’d shaved and, at Gina’s gentle insistence, had his hair trimmed; the girl who’d trimmed his hair, in the salon in the lobby of the hotel, had also plucked a few dark wiry hairs between his eyebrows. The process, she’d assured him in musically accented English, was, like many things in life, painful but necessary.
Shake drew her chair back so Gina could sit. Aside from the glimpse of himself in the mirror, the quick appraisal of the crowded restaurant when they’d arrived, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Nor, he admitted, had he really wanted to. She wore a silk dress, dark green, the one from the store. It was cut in such a way that left much to the imagination but at the same time guided the imagination in some very intriguing directions.
Shake asked for the menu. The waiter said there wasn’t one. The chef cooked what he felt was good, the waiter brought it to you, you ate it. Shake wasn’t sure what he thought about this, but he didn’t say anything.
“So tell me more about this Ziegler guy who wants to buy the foreskins,” Gina said after the waiter had filled their wineglasses.
Shake didn’t have much more to tell. “He started out legit, New York money, but preferred the shady side of the street. He pulled off his first big scam in the midnineties. The old people I told you about?”
“Details,” Gina said.
“Your basic pyramid scheme. He cruised Florida and Arizona, went after the retirees, wowed them with his degree from Wharton and a lot of high-tech mumbo jumbo. Bled them dry, then blew the country.”
“They caught him?”
The first course arrived. Fried plantains almost lighter than air, with some kind of a garlic mayonnaise. A combination Shake wouldn’t have dreamed up in a million years, but it was very, very good.
“Eventually. He came back for a second helping, but they grabbed him this time. Few days before his trial, he welcomed the Lord Jesus Christ into his heart.”
“They fell for that?”
“Probably not. But he cut a deal where he promised to help the feds track down other white-collar criminals. It was tricky stuff, a lot of what was going on. You practically had to have an advanced degree in economics just to understand you’d been robbed. The guys at Justice were just cops, working stiffs who knew how to hide a wire and fill out an incident report. Most of them were out of their league when you went two places past the decimal. Ziegler offered to use his powers, you know, for good not evil.”
Gina giggled. “They fell for that?”
“He played ball for about a year. Alexandra told me the feds were thrilled. Bust after bust after bust. It rained Cayman accounts.”
“There’s always,” Gina said, “a ‘but then.’ ”
“But then,” Shake continued, “after Ziegler had used the resources of the federal government to put all his closest competitors and personal enemies behind bars, after he’d learned everything he could about how his closest competitors and personal enemies and the federal government worked, he disappeared.”
“He decided it was more fun to use his powers for evil.”
The next course arrived. Two kinds of ceviche. The octopus was warm, with roasted peppers and tomatoes, almost Tuscan. The sea bass was cold, with an explosive citrus-cilantro wallop. Both were ridiculously fresh. Shake closed his eyes while he chewed.
“He stayed busy,” Shake said. “He landed another huge score a few years ago. Something with server farms and bank routing codes.”
“How did that one work?”
“I didn’t know this was a private tutorial.”
“I like to live and learn.” Gina tapped a fingernail thoughtfully against her teeth. “So, the elusive Mr. Ziegler. You really think he’ll just come to us?”
“I’m hoping,” Shake said. “It’s your buddy Marvin Oates I’m worried about. If we can’t find him, if we can’t find the foreskins—”
“It’s not going to be a problem.”
“You say so.”
The waiter brought the next course. Duck in a sweet, dark, smoky sauce, mole meets Kansas City barbecue. This was serious stuff. Shake held up a palm to forestall the next round of discussion, and they ate in silence.
The ginger prawns were even better than the duck, and the grilled dorado with lemon was even better than the prawns. There was also pork loin with sautéed bok choy, clams with butter.
“Wow,” Shake said after they’d finished dessert. Shredded coconut flavored with a sweet heavy syrup, plus a miniature flan and green tea with cinnamon.
“Beats the food in stir?”
He smiled. “You ever do time?”
“Does working for the Whale count?”
“What did you do before that?”
“You name it. Worked at Starbucks. Sold cell phones at the mall. Cocktail waitress. Various entrepreneurial activities of the less-than-legal sort, when the opportunity arose. I never turned tricks, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
“I wouldn’t ever do that. I didn’t even like giving lap dances. Sex should be all about fun, not profit. Or fun and profit, not just profit.”
“What about love?”
“Sex should be about fun, profit, and love? Or fun and profit, but not love?”
“Well, that’s one of the great conundrums, isn’t it?” Shake said.
The waiter brought espressos and the bill, which came—with tax, tip, and the wine—to under seventy-five bucks. Shake wondered how long it would take him to learn Spanish and find an apartment down here.
“I bet you had fun stealing the Whale’s three hundred grand.”
“That’s different.” Gina giggled. “What about you? Besides the driving?”
“I was a cook.”
“Aha.”
“You have to have something to show your PO,” Shake said, “and most kitchens don’t care where you come from, as long as you get there on time and don’t stab the waiters.”
“When I was young, like seventeen, I was a topless shoeshine girl. That was my introduction to the adult-entertainment industry. My first day, I went up to this guy’s hotel room, right, and it turned out I was really supposed to give shoeshines. I thought I was just supposed to look cute and topless and maybe do a little dance.”
Shake laughed. “What did the guy say?”
“He was apologetic. He said he had a big job interview in the morning and wanted his shoes to look really good.”
“So tell me.”
“About the various entrepreneurial activities of the less-than-legal sort?”
“I like to live and learn.”
She shrugged. “Mostly small-time stuff. I wouldn’t even really call them cons. Pretending to be some rich guy’s daughter’s friend, while she was away in Europe for her junior year abroad. That sort of thing. I did a couple of honey traps, with this friend of mine, but those take forever to set up right.”
“You’ve a had a full life,” Shake said, “a girl your age.”
“Twenty-six,” she said. She hawk-eyed his reaction. “Well? Don’t lie or I’ll know it.”
“I was thinking twenty-four,” he said, which was the truth.
She seemed satisfied. She sipped her espresso. “So you were nineteen, huh, your first time?”
“Good memory.”
“What happened?”
Shake knew what she meant. He thought about it. “I fell in with the wrong crowd,” he said. “What’s your story?”
She glanced away from him, which wasn’t like her at all.
“I was born into the wrong crowd,” she said, “if you know what I mean.”
Shake did. And for a splinter of an instant, looking across the table at her, the candlelight softening the angles of her face, he thought he glimpsed a young woman more complica
ted, sadder and sweeter, than she’d ever admit.
Or maybe that’s just what she wanted him to glimpse. Shake wasn’t sure.
She turned back to him. Smiled. Winked.
“How about a nightcap before bed?”
Chapter 30
The waiter went to the back and brought out the restaurant manager. Now Ted was being glared at by three people: Nerlides, the waiter, and the restaurant manager, who was short and unshaven. He smelled pungently of sweat and cigarettes.
The waiter and the manager talked rapidly and angrily at Ted in Spanish. Then Nerlides talked rapidly and angrily at Ted in Spanish. She seemed to be under the impression she was translating.
Ted kept trying to explain—English, mime, the few Spanish words he knew—that he had somehow lost his wallet, but that it was going to be okay, he intended to pay, he had not noticed the missing wallet earlier because the shuttle van from the hotel had been complimentary, the wallet was just probably back at his hotel room, and Ted was in no way attempting to pull a fast one on the waiter, the manager, or Nerlides.
He tried to make them understand that he would go back to his hotel room, find his wallet, and return to pay the bill. He took a step toward the door to demonstrate.
“Ai-ai-ai!” both the waiter and the manager said, or something like that, and they each grabbed one of Ted’s arms to stop him. They marched him, Nerlides following along, to the back of the restaurant. Through the suffocatingly hot, cramped kitchen to a suffocatingly hot, cramped office off the kitchen.
The manager pointed to the telephone on the desk next to the computer and made Ted understand that he’d better call someone to bring him some money, pronto, or he, the manager, would call the police and have Ted arrested.
Ted couldn’t believe that this was happening to him. He was soaked with sweat. He didn’t know who to call. He couldn’t call the hotel. George would still be on his “date.” Ted didn’t know Frank the Facilitator’s last name. The other guys, even if he remembered their last names, would still be on their “dates.” He couldn’t call his credit-card company, because that number was on the credit card in the wallet he didn’t have with him. He couldn’t call his brother, of course. He could call Hannah, his favorite colleague at the Chamber of Commerce, but how mortifying would that be? And what could she do, ten o’clock at night, from the United States? What if her surly husband answered?