***
I called my travel agent again and changed my reservation.
I typed Carol’s name and phone number on the cover sheet of my book list. Wrote a cover letter. Addressed a manila envelope. Licked stamps.
I opened a bottle of wine and poured myself a glass. Another. I had finished the bottle by the time Kitty showed up, and I still hadn’t numbed the pain.
Part III
Chapter Twenty-One
“That creep is staring at me,” Kitty whispered to me. “He keeps staring at me.”
“What creep?” I asked.
“That one right there.”
“He’s not even facing this way.”
“Just watch.”
We were standing in one of those long back-and-forth lines like they have at Disneyland, but this was at the American Airlines check-in counter at LAX, lined up for the seven a.m. flight to Miami. We’d been there since six, after a two-hour drive from Santa Barbara and a half-hour long-term parking process with a shuttle that drove us by a sign that said LIVE NUDE GIRLS, which Kitty had looked at with disgust. “Tacky,” she had said. “No class.”
“You got the tickets?” she asked me now.
“Don’t need tickets.” I fished in my jacket pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper my travel agent had faxed to me. “This is our confirmation. They’ll give us our tickets when we check our bags. And our seat assignments.”
“They better let us sit together,” she said. “I’m not sitting next to that creep.” She wasn’t whispering anymore, but she was speaking softly and her lips were barely moving.
The creep still hadn’t looked our way, so far as I could tell. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and was rolling a plaid suitcase. His head was bald on top and gray around the sides, but he stood up straight. Tall, good-looking. His carry-on was plaid too. Maybe that’s why Kitty thought he was a creep. Plaid luggage? Maybe he was Scottish.
“Relax,” I told her. “Got your passport?”
She fished it out of her purse and handed it to me. “It’s a shitty picture.”
“That’s what makes it official.” I opened it and looked at a plain, unsmiling, brown-haired young woman named Catherine Williams. “This is you? Catherine Williams?”
“Guilty, your honor.”
“How did you go from Catherine Williams to Kitty Katz?”
“I was always called Kitty,” she said. “Roger gave me the Katz. Said it was a good fit, marketing-wise.”
“And Pussy?”
“No comment. Look, I’m not ashamed of what I do for a living, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
“Speaking of which.”
I looked up and the man with the plaid bags had rounded a corner. He was facing us now, and sure enough, he was checking us out. Checking Kitty out. I stepped in front of her and faced the man. I smiled and said, “Hello. Pretty early in the morning, huh? Going to Miami?”
The man smiled back. Tan, weathered face and bright white teeth. Yeah, bald, but so’s Sean Connery. “I’ve been watching you two,” he answered. “Honeymooners?”
“No, business,” I said. “You?”
“Pleasure. Strictly pleasure. Have a good flight.”
“Same flight as yours,” I commented. “You have a good flight too.”
“I plan to sleep through the whole thing.”
I turned around and whispered to Kitty, “He’s harmless. Nice guy.”
“He was ogling me,” she insisted. “Believe me, I know.”
“So aren’t you used to being admired?”
Kitty shook her head at me as if I were a dumb kid. “They better have coffee on this flight,” she said. “Then I’ll start acting like a human being. I’m not exactly what you’d call a morning person.”
***
There was coffee on the flight, and shrink-wrapped sweet rolls. The bald man traveling for pleasure was seated several rows behind us, across the aisle, and Kitty looked back often to be sure he wasn’t still ogling her; true to his word, he slept all the way.
As we began flying over the United States, Kitty and I quizzed each other on Spanish vocabulary, using a Berlitz phrase book I had picked up in the bookshop at LAX. The words that interested her most were “taco,” “Dos Equis,” “dos mas tequilas, mi amigo,” “¿Dónde está el baño, por favor?,” and “No, gracias, señor.” I learned how to say, “May I have an ashtray on the table, if you please?,” “Do you accept Master Charge?,” and “It is raining today but not as windy as yesterday. Yesterday was very windy. Where is the hotel?”
We got tired before we’d crossed the Mississippi, and we decided to continue the lesson on the next leg of the trip. Meanwhile, Kitty told me what she’d found out from Gracie the day before.
“She looked like shit. They had her dressed in this yellow canvas suit made her look like fucking Big Bird, and no makeup. Of course Gracie never wears makeup except when she’s working but she looked drab and gray, and her eyes were swollen and red from no sleep and crying for two days straight. They could at least have given her a little lipstick or something, and a brush to take care of her hair. Her hair was all greasy and knotted, shit. Poor girl. Oh, that poor girl! Gracie never did anything bad to anybody, and look what those assholes did to her.
“Like Rosa said, they nabbed her at noon when she tried to check in for the flight to Miami. They asked for a picture ID, and she handed them her passport, which it turns out was invalid because it had a bunch of holes punched out of it. I guess that’s what they do to passports when they don’t want you to use them anymore. I asked Gracie how come her passport was all fucked up like that and she said she had no idea, but it had to be that asshole Roger who punched those holes. Because I asked her about the coke in her carry-on and she broke down and said she didn’t know how that coke got in her carry-on, because she’d never owned that much coke in her life before, well maybe in her life but not all at one time, and she was framed, but by who she says. Who, she says. Duh?
“I just let her sit there sniffling for a minute and and then I put my hand across the table, I didn’t care if I wasn’t supposed to touch her, there were guards all over the place, and said, Honey think about it, who’s the only asshole you know who carries that much dope? She knew who I was talking about but she wouldn’t believe it. She’s all, You mean Roger? Like Roger’s some kind of good guy, some big hero, some saint. She’s all, Roger wouldn’t do that. Oh right, I said, and she’s like, But why? Why would he do that? He’s the one who’s going to get me out of this mess.
“Oh yeah? I go, Right. When he comes back from his vacation? His Caribbean cruise? So she breaks down and says, What’s he going to think when he gets to Miami and I’m not there to meet his plane? He’ll be stranded. And I just sit there and and then I say, real soft and nice, Gracie, Honey, who’s stranded?
“That got her. She’s a puddle of tears now, and you know Gracie, she doesn’t cry a lot. She’s shaking her head back and forth, back and forth, tears streaming out of her eyes, and she says, But why? Why would Roger leave me behind like this? Why?”
By now Kitty was crying, too, gently, wiping tears from her lower eyelids before they could wreck her makeup. “And I squeezed her hand, a little harder than I should of, and looked her right in the eye, and said, Yeah. I said, Why? I said, looking straight at her, Why would somebody leave somebody behind, Gracie? Huh?
“I mean, she left me behind too, right? And was I supposed to pretend I wasn’t totally pissed off? Oh man. Oh man. I didn’t know whether I was bummed or pissed or stressed or what, or was I just so sorry for this poor baby, my Gracie, just sitting there looking pitiful, the bitch, the poor sweet girl. She’s all choked up, she’s like, We were going to send for you, we were going to send for you. Well, so okay, I give her the benefit of the doubt, like maybe she thought that was the plan, but I told her, You maybe, but Roger wasn’t going to send for me any more than he’s going to get you out of th
is mess. Roger left for Miami yesterday morning, sweetheart. You heard from him yet? Huh? Heard from him yet, because I sure haven’t. I’m like, He did this to you, Gracie. He did this to you. Paper-punched your passport, put a bunch of toot in your tote. You’re a fucking victim, and how does it feel?”
Kitty peered back to be sure the baldheaded fellow in the Hawaiian shirt still had his eyes closed.
“Don’t you think you should have told some of this to Rosa Macdonald?” I asked her.
“Oh yeah, right. Like she’s going to do anything about it. She’s got the hots for me, by the way.”
“Rosa has the hots for you?” I asked. “How do you know?”
“There’s ways. You wouldn’t know, and I couldn’t teach you. It’s a girl thing.”
“So why not let her in on this stuff about Roger and Gracie? Wouldn’t that help Gracie out to have her know?”
“Fuck that,” Kitty said. “I’m going after Roger myself. I’m going to give him one more chance to make good on his promise to both of us. Me and Gracie both.”
My turn to say: “Yeah, right. Set you both up for life in a tropical paradise, mangoes and bananas you can pick right off a tree, not to mention free rum, free cocaine—”
“Oh shut up, Guy.”
“Well?”
“I don’t expect him to be kind to us because he’s a kind kind of guy, Guy. You know? He only does favors for people when it’s really them doing a favor for him, okay? So I’m going to do him a favor. I’m going to not bust his ass, and he’s going to help me get Gracie out of this mess, and then we’ll call it quits. Okay?”
“Any idea how you’re going to not bust his ass if he cooperates, or how you’re going to if he doesn’t?”
She shook her head fast, as if to clear out the gnats. “It sounds like we both need to get some sleep.”
With that she closed her eyes in a manner that was all business.
***
“Shit, he’s on this plane, too.”
It was true. He was sitting two rows in front of us this time, and he’d smiled at us as we passed him in the aisle. “Just don’t pay any attention to him.”
“That’s easy for you,” Kitty said. “You’re not the one he’s stalking.”
“Buckle up,” I told her. “We’ve got a long flight ahead of us, and we’re going to learn some Spanish.”
“Did you see the way he was looking at me?”
“¿Puede enseñarme en el mapa dónde estoy?”
“I mean, what are the chances of our both being on the same American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Miami and the same El Salvador Airlines flight from Miami to fucking San Salvador?”
“¿Que tipo de mariscos tiene usted?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Same here. I mean, I understand the Spanish, but there’s no phrase book for what you’re saying about that poor innocent tourist. Just enjoy the trip, Kitty. How often do you get to travel to the Caribbean?”
“I’m not traveling for the fun of it.”
I nodded. “Me either, come to think of it.”
Kitty reached into my lap and grabbed my hand as the plane started taxiing down the runway. As we lifted into the air, she lifted my hand to her lips and kissed my knuckles, one by one. She finally gave me her first smile of the day. “You’re a sweetie pie, Guy Mallon,” she said. “Too bad we’re both hung up on different people.”
“Damn shame,” I admitted.
She put my thumb in her mouth and did something delicious and obscene to it with her tongue, then put my hand back in my lap. “I just want you to know I appreciate you doing this for me.”
“Aw, well,” I said. “I’m really doing it for me, you know.”
“Always wanted to see the Caribbean?”
“No. Well, yeah, but that’s not why I’m on this plane. I’m on this plane because Roger Herndon stole my soul. Well, I guess he didn’t, really. I was careless with it and left it lying around. But he took it, and I want him to give it back. It will be fun going after him without Rosa Macdonald always getting in the way. We’ll nail his ass one way or another, Catherine Williams. I don’t know exactly how or exactly why, but it’s something to do when you’re out of other options. He’ll give us satisfaction or we’ll turn him over to the war on drugs.”
“I got no use for the fucking war on drugs,” Kitty said. “I just got a war on Roger.”
“It might get dangerous. You’re going to be careful, right?”
She grinned at me. “Am I the one who’s always getting beat up?”
“Necesito un médico rápidamente.”
“I got to pee,” she said. “I wonder where the bathrooms are on this crate?”
“Un momento. Veré si lo puedo encontrar en este libro.”
“Damn, it’s up front. I’m going to have to walk right by that guy.”
“Relax,” I said. “Está tranquilízate.”
“Well, he’s going to be looking right at my butt.”
“You’re wearing loose sweats, Kitty.”
“I could care less. That man gives me the creeps.”
While Kitty was out of her seat, and after she’d returned, complained about the bald ogler, and then fallen into a drooling snooze, I had some time to myself to ponder. Why the hell was I making this trip? Did I really hate Roger Herndon all that much? Thinking back over the past few months I realized the thing that made me maddest was that he’d walked into the warehouse the evening we first met him and helped himself to our pizza without being invited and never even thanked us for it. Carol had been furious about that and had expected me to say something, and I never did.
So.
The point is: here I was. I was on the plane. I was doing this thing, this dangerous, expensive, exhausting thing, partly to help Kitty out but mostly to hear Roger Herndon apologize for being a jerk, and to hear him say thanks for the pizza. Anything else would be gravy.
***
To Kitty’s vast relief, Old Baldy wasn’t on the Taca Airlines flight out of San Salvador. My relief too, because her paranoia was beginning to freak me out. We relaxed, forgot most of the Spanish we had learned over the past five thousand miles, and gazed down on green jungles. As we descended into San Pedro Sula, the jungles turned to plantations, just as green but with all the thousands of trees in orderly rows. Then the dirty city rose to meet us and we bounced to the ground and bumped along the pitted runway to a stop.
We went through customs and immigration, grateful that all the people we had to deal with spoke English, then settled down for another wait, this time in a steamy, un-air-conditioned airport where the ceiling fans didn’t do much to the air current besides stir up the flies a bit. Kitty threatened to take off her sweatshirt, but when I found out how much she wasn’t wearing underneath I told her the jail was probably a lot hotter than the airport. She took her carry-on to the women’s room and returned wearing a pink Kountry Klub tee shirt. As they say in the porn trade, she was barely legal, and the local men did a bunch of subtle, polite ogling that didn’t seem to bother her a bit.
We waited the rest of the afternoon, about an hour and a half, until we were led across the tarmac to a baby airplane. We climbed the steps, entered the airplane, took our seats, and buckled up. Up and away again, this time over the darkening blue water and out toward the silhouette of a long disheveled island. We touched down on a dimly lit landing strip and rolled to a stop in front of a concrete terminal.
We climbed out of the plane and stretched on the tarmac. The air was warm and sticky and smelled like fuel and spice. We walked wearily into the terminal, where we stood and waited until our luggage was laid out for us.
“Let’s shlep,” I said, when we finally had our suitcases in hand. “See if we can find the taxis. Can you remember how to say, ‘Please take us to Pirate’s Paradise’ in Spanish?”
Kitty gave me a worried look. “Can you?”
/> “I think you just smile and say ‘Pirate’s Paradise, por favor.’”
“Hey, Cap’n, Pirate’s Paradise right this way. Come on, come on!”
We turned and faced a sweet gap-toothed smile on a fat black man with Louis Armstrong eyes. “Yes sir!” he chuckled. “Pirate’s Paradise, coming right up. Come on, come on! Gimme those bags, my friend. And throw away that Spanish book, Cap’n. This here’s Morgania. It’s all English here. All English, Cap’n. All English. Yes sir. All English. I’m Oliver. Right this way!” He hoisted both of our bags and both our carry-ons into his mighty arms and strode off. We had to haul ass to keep up.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Oliver wore a “Dive Morgania” tee shirt, cutoff khaki slacks, and flip-flops. His breathing had a wheeze to it, and his soft chuckle rumbled like far-off thunder. A giant of a man, he barely fit behind the steering wheel of his taxi cab, a rusty old Plymouth Fury with a push-button gear shift on the dash. The back seat where we sat was cracked and patched with duct tape. Oliver drove at a steady speed of about twenty miles an hour, maneuvering around potholes and fallen palm fronds. The windows were open all around and we breathed in the damp and pungent air.
“This your first visit to Morgania?” he asked. “Our historic island?”
“That’s right,” I said. “It’s a beautiful place.”
Oliver laughed out loud. “You seein’ it in the dark, Cap’n. You seein’ it in the dark. Lots of things look pretty in the dark, you know what I’m talking about.”
“It’s not pretty in the daytime?” Kitty asked.
He chuckled. “Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Morgania is the prettiest place on earth, day or night, rain or shine, year in, year out, it’s the prettiest place. You folks gone love it here, you hear? You divers?”
“No, we’re here on business,” Kitty answered. I elbowed her in the ribs. “Tourist business,” she quickly added.
“Thass good,” Oliver said. “Thass the kind business Morgania likes. Not funny business. Just nice tourist business. So you folks staying at Pirate’s Paradise. You gone like that. Gone like the Pirate’s Paradise. Nice place, Pirate’s Paradise.”
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