by Lou Berney
Was it really that much of a stretch? To think that someday she might be a wife and a mom? She’d still be herself, after all, just a wife and a mom, too. Doing wife things and mom things in her own way, not somebody else’s.
Okay, she admitted, it was kind of a stretch. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She liked stretches; she liked surprising herself and making herself think, Wow, I can’t believe I just did that.
Gina imagined it would take a long time for the sex with Shake to get dull. And she didn’t think the conversation ever would. Shake, like few people she’d ever met, knew how to keep her on her toes.
All this made for interesting musing. Gina didn’t know if it was useful, though.
She was certain Shake would get it right away, her idea for the chain of high-end dry-cleaning places.
“So, Gina,” Ziegler said, turning to her with a big smile. He knew he had good teeth and worked them like a stripper with perfectly shaped nipples. In your face, in other words. “Did I tell you, Gina, about the condo I have in Manhattan? Top floor of the building, with the best view of Central Park in the city.”
Gina was surprised. “I thought fleeing the country meant fleeing the country.”
“The feds?” Ziegler smirked. “They’re idiots. Field agents are basically one rung up the evolutionary ladder from the people who snap your picture at the DMV.”
Gina felt Shake clench his jaw again. He was cracking her up. “Is that right?” she asked, pretending, just to make Shake clench his jaw some more, to be breathless with interest.
Shake figured out what she was doing, though. He gave her a look, then made a big point of ignoring her to concentrate on the plate of fish the waiter had set in front of him.
“I’ve got fake passports,” Ziegler went on, “the best, I’ve got tinted lenses and prosthetic nose attachments and shoes with special heels so I walk differently, but—and I’ll tell you, I’ve come up with some pretty cunning shit—I mean, that’s what I do for a living, I have to use my brain, my imagination, I’m always having to figure out ways to beat the …” He paused and played with his glass of wine. Which, counting the champagne, was his fourth. Gina always kept count. It was almost always useful information. “What was I saying?”
“How cunning you are,” Shake said, without looking up from his fish.
“Right,” Ziegler said. “Even so. I could probably move back to New York City full-time. Put my real name on the mailbox. They still wouldn’t be able to get me.”
“But you don’t do that,” Gina said, flirting, “because you like your islands too much.”
“You might like them, too, Gina,” Ziegler said.
“Lots of old people with money in Panama,” Shake said. Then, “This sea bass isn’t bad.”
Ziegler leaned back in his chair and chuckled.
“You’re right,” he said. “Guilty as charged. I didn’t pick Panama with a dart and a blindfold. There are certain … opportunities … here, for a guy with my skill set. A few years ago, Forbes named it one of the top places in the world to retire. Warm climate, inexpensive, top-notch medical care. A lot of the natives speak English.”
“The natives?” Shake said.
“Think about it,” Ziegler said, ignoring him, “you’re a front-edge Boomer about to hit sixty-two in, what, Philadelphia. A school administrator, for example. Kids all growed up and moved away. You’ve got a decent pension, some money in the house, but who knows will it be enough. You want two things out of life right now.”
He held up a finger. “Financial security.” He held up another finger. “Adventure.”
“A paradox,” Gina suggested helpfully.
“Not in Panama,” Ziegler said. “Here, you can have it all. And wait, a third thing, too. A live-in maid to cook and clean. Two hundred and fifty bucks a month. That’s a powerful lure, even for someone who listens to NPR and buys, what, carbon-offset credits when they take their ecotour of wherever, wherever. You should see up around Boquete. The highlands? There are gated communities springing up on every hillside. It looks like Boca Raton.”
‘ “The best way to overcome temptation is to succumb to it,’ ” Gina said. “Oscar Wilde.”
Both Shake and Ziegler looked at her.
“What?” she said. “I went to college.”
“You did?” Shake said.
“Sort of,” Gina said. It was a long story.
Shake finished his fish. Which Gina had found fishy.
“So the sheep come to you now,” Shake said. “Not a bad setup.”
Ziegler motioned to one of the waiters, who topped off his wineglass.
“That’s not the only iron I’ve got in the fire,” Ziegler said. “You kidding me? Medical tourism, for example. That’s taking off. And the IMB.”
“Where you can look up movies on the Internet?” Gina said.
“International marriage business. Crazy money, and it’s just going to get crazier and crazier. Lonely loser schmucks looking for women who won’t realize they’re dating lonely loser schmucks. Or’ll at least pretend they don’t realize it, if it means a chance to escape the precaristas, the shantytowns. The website fees alone triple my nut, then we bring tour groups in from the States and mix them up with the single girls here.”
“The natives,” Shake said.
Ziegler let the jab slide. Or, Gina considered, missed it entirely. He shook his head. “The problem is, Panamanian girls, pound for pound they’re some of the homeliest girls you’ve ever seen. Friendly yes, but. At least the ones we can get for the mixers. It’s a drawback of the good economy down here. You don’t have your motivated labor supply, you know?”
“So the solution is?” Gina asked. A guy like Ziegler didn’t say, “The problem is …” without already having a “The solution is …” all prepped and ready to fire.
“The solution is,” Ziegler said, leaning close and showing her his good teeth again, “Cartagena. An hour away by plane, four by boat. And Colombian women, wow. Hot, poor, and cheap to transport. Trifecta.”
“Huh,” Gina said. This was intriguing stuff. She liked learning new things.
“What happens,” Shake said, “when these girls, who I’m guessing don’t speak much English. Who I’m guessing have some other issues, too, being hot and poor and cheap to transport. What happens when they go up to El Norte and marry lonely losers who couldn’t find, on an entire continent of their own, a girl willing to marry them?”
“Who cares?” Ziegler said, with what seemed to Gina genuine bafflement. She realized it was the first time he’d directly answered a question.
The waiters brought dessert and a pinkish dessert wine.
“Let’s talk some business, boys,” Gina said.
SHAKE WASN’T WORRIED ABOUT GINA’S flirting with Ziegler. It’s just what she did. Like, if you were good at math, you doodled equations probably without even thinking about it. It was her way of having fun, of taking the arrogant prick’s measure, of softening Ziegler up and making him even more stupid than he already was. Plus, Gina could tell, and it didn’t take a mind reader in this case, how much Shake couldn’t stand the arrogant prick. That made the flirting even more fun for her.
So why was Shake worried?
Because he knew that if he’d figured out four of the reasons Gina was flirting with Ziegler, that meant there were probably four more he hadn’t figured out yet. And probably a couple of others Gina herself didn’t know about yet.
And yes, Shake suspected that in the same way the best lies always have a seed of truth, no one could flirt this convincingly without meaning it just a little.
Jesus, Shake thought, annoyed with himself. Am I thirteen years old here, or what?
He looked over at Ziegler. Who was pale and plump, with shifty eyes like dull, dark, plastic buttons. A cartoon of an arrogant, stupid prick.
How did a guy like that end up with millions and millions of dollars, two private islands, and enough whatever it was, in addition to the mil
lions and the islands, to get a girl like Gina to flirt with him?
Why wasn’t it Shake sitting on the other side of that table?
He’d read a book in prison about why certain civilizations (the Europeans in Columbus’s time, for example) had conquered other civilizations (the Incas and the Aztecs, with all that gold Ziegler had mentioned). And not vice versa. Even though the author of the book said the Incas and the Aztecs were just as smart as the Europeans, had balls just as big.
What it came down to were the particular natural resources of the particular continent on which a particular civilization developed. Shake couldn’t remember all the details, but basically it had to do with the Europeans and the Asians getting oxen and horses to domesticate. And the Incas, on the other hand, getting stuck with llamas and guinea pigs, which weren’t so great for pulling plows or riding into battle.
Ziegler, Shake knew, had been born into money. He’d gone to private schools and Harvard and Wharton. Probably he’d gotten into some trouble as a kid—most kids did—but Ziegler would have never gone to juvie or jail for it; his parents would have put the family lawyers on the local D.A. like white on rice.
Shake frowned at himself. Maybe the theory worked for continents but not for people. His line of work, Shake had met plenty of people who’d started out with nothing and ended up conquering their share of Incas. Alexandra, for example. He’d also met plenty of people who became fuckups no matter what neighborhood they grew up in, who liked to blame their fuckups on everyone and everything but the one who was really responsible. They raised martyred self-pity to an art.
Shake decided to not join them.
“So, kids,” Ziegler said, “just guessing here, but—those foreskins don’t belong to you, do they?”
“Now, Roland,” Gina said, “what in the world would make you think such a thing?”
She had one hand on Shake’s knee and the other hand on the table, next to her dessert plate. Although, wait—Shake wondered where Gina’s other hand had disappeared to, the one that just a second ago had been resting next to her dessert plate.
Shake, thoroughly disgusted with himself now, looked away. Out at the water down below, glittering in the moonlight. He could make out a small island in the distance—a thin strip of pale sand and a patch of dark jungle, like a hole in the bright, moon-glow sky.
“Why would I think those foreskins don’t belong to you?” Ziegler said. The one time out of a hundred he answered a question straight, without bobbing and weaving, he had to repeat it for you first. “Well, because I happen to know a nice Russian lady in Los Angeles and a not-so-nice Whale in Vegas.”
“She’s Armenian,” Shake said. “And she’s not so nice either.”
“So I wonder,” Ziegler went on. Ignoring him. “Do I make my deal with the freelancers? Or be a good corporate citizen and whistle in my original partner?”
“The freelancers,” Gina pointed out, “are the ones with the foreskins in hand, don’t forget. So to speak. And who might be willing to sell said foreskins at a friend-of-the-family discount.”
Ziegler pursed his lips and tipped back in his chair and pretended to mull this over. If this prick ever had to do time, Shake thought, he’d last about a minute, or as long as it takes to suffocate with your head jammed in a pan of rehydrated prison-mess breakfast grits, however long that would take.
“Seven?” Ziegler said finally.
Seven million. Holy shit. Shake knew that Gina wouldn’t blow it. He kept gazing out at the water to make sure he didn’t.
“Nine,” Gina said without missing a beat. “We’re not running a charity here, you know.”
Ziegler laughed and snapped his fingers to summon the waiter. Of course the prick wasn’t going to give his answer until it suited him.
“Let’s go for a drive before we crunch the numbers,” he said. “I’ve got something special to show you.”
Chapter 39
Ziegler drove them into town. Portobelo was no longer so bello, just a cluster of cement-block buildings with corrugated iron roofs, muddy, half-paved streets, furtive-browed dogs slinking from garbage can to garbage can, a knockout view of the sea. The town was only a couple of hours’ drive from Panama City, but it seemed centuries even further away than that.
They pulled up outside an old colonial church and parked. The stonework was similar to that of the coastal fortifications above, but the church had been repaired and restored over the years, probably several times. It wasn’t crumbling; it just looked like it was about to.
The massive wooden doors to the church were closed and locked. Ziegler grinned and told them to be patient, patient, even though neither Shake nor Gina had shown any sign of being anything but. A few minutes later, Shake heard a key scraping inside, the iron lock clanking. A kid in his late teens, his white shirt buttoned to the top, swung the doors open. He looked just about as furtive-browed as the dogs Shake had seen prowling the streets. He gave Ziegler a quick bow as they entered, then quickly closed the doors behind them and melted away into the shadows.
The interior of the church was lit with dozens, maybe hundreds, of flickering candles.
Ziegler checked their reactions. Shake didn’t have much of one. He’d been an altar boy back in New Orleans and served at more than his share of predawn weekday Masses. Gina, though, indulged Ziegler by making an “oooh” face.
“Just imagine,” Ziegler whispered. “The stone, the candlelight. All the same. This could be four hundred years ago. Pirates cruising in the bay. Cannons booming from the fort. Your only hope of salvation—right here.”
He led them up behind the altar. Shake, former altar boy, felt the jump of boyhood nerves. You weren’t supposed to be up here unless you were the priest. Get caught and you’d go to hell. Or at least get a shoe thrown at you back in the sacristy by Father Voisinet, who had one hell of a temper.
“Are you coming?” Gina whispered.
Shake nodded. He waited till they’d both turned, then quickly crossed himself and followed. If a childhood under the guidance of the Catholic Church taught you anything, it was to cover all your bets and keep them so.
“Take a look at this,” Ziegler whispered. He lifted back a corner of the sacred cloth and pointed to the center of the altar. A small square, about the size of a cigar box, had been cut from the marble and covered with glass. Inside this compartment were the bones of a human hand. They were the color, in the candlelight, of soft yellow butter.
“St. Terwin of Cappadocia,” Ziegler whispered. “Martyred in the ninth century. In what’s now Turkey. Before most people had even dreamed there was a New World.”
Gina peered at the skeleton hand. “It’s real?”
“Even better,” Ziegler said. “It’s the fourteenth century now, okay? The Black Death spreading across Europe. People panicking. Peasants starting to wonder, hey, our priests and bishops, they’re supposed to have God’s ear, right? So why are they rich and why is my, you know, wife covered with stinking pustules and dying? The church was worried. Bad PR. So this one priest, guy in a village in northern Spain, he figures he better try to do something. So he cuts off his own hand. Discovers, quote-unquote, the bones of the hand of St. Terwin of Cappadocia. Obscure saint at the time—smart priest, he knows he won’t run into infringement issues. And then, get this, the Black Death, in northern Spain at least, at least for a while, it goes away. Thanks to the hand of St. Terwin.”
“No one noticed that the guy who discovered the hand of St. Terwin was suddenly missing a hand?” Shake asked.
Ziegler scoffed, as if the answer were obvious, which Shake figured meant he didn’t have any idea what it was, the answer.
“So how’d the digits in question end up here?” Gina asked.
“The Spaniards brought them over,” Shake said, because he knew it would take the prick Ziegler half an hour to get around to answering the question. “When they colonized the Americas, every church they built, they needed a sacred relic to sanctify it.”
> “It was a dangerous world out here,” said Ziegler, who seemed only mildly peeved that Shake had stolen his thunder. He seemed genuinely fascinated as he gazed down at the fake St. Terwin’s skeleton hand. “Disease and pirates and wild animals and Indians. You needed protection. Relics were just as important to the Spanish as gunpowder. They took their faith very seriously. This was the crowd, remember, that brought us the Inquisition.”
“And that’s why you collect fake relics,” Shake suggested. “Because you take your faith very seriously.”
Ziegler was more than mildly peeved this time but did a fairly good job of covering with a chuckle.
“When I was a kid, the other kids collected, what, baseball cards? Star Wars figurines? I could never see the point. If you’re gonna collect something, it should be rare. It should be almost impossible to get. And it should have a history, it should tell part of the story of history. The story should be as fascinating as the thing. The story is what you’re collecting.”
It was first time Shake had come remotely close to not despising the guy. That feeling lasted about three seconds, until Shake noticed Ziegler smirking smugly.
Ziegler tilted his head toward the altar. “But those aren’t the bones the Spaniards brought over in the sixteenth century.” He smirked some more.
“You stole those,” Shake guessed.
“Oh, no!” Ziegler said, as if affronted. “I paid a very fair price for them. Of course, the good gentleman I purchased them from—a novitiate of this very church, what a coincidence—I’m sure I have no idea how they came into his possession.”
“Maybe someday,” Shake said, “the new fake in there will be more valuable than your old fake.”
Ziegler gave Shake a blank look. Then rebooted and grinned again.
“The Black Death hand of St. Terwin, at the moment, is the number-one sparkling jewel of my collection. I’d like to make it the number-two sparkling jewel of my collection. Yes? If we can arrive at mutually agreeable terms.”
“The one hundred foreskins,” Gina said. “Speaking of which.”