by Ian Vasquez
He snorted. “No need to talk like that.” He stood up and walked toward her room. “Candice, let me tell you something,” paused to examine framed photos on the wall—a pier like a wooden finger in green water at St. George’s Caye; a low wide-angle shot of coconut trees going crazy in a blue-black storm—and he said, “It’s because we believe you’re fucking the DEA.”
“Didn’t you just say no need for that talk.”
“It’s a different sense of the word, dear.”
“Why don’t you tell me what I should do, then drink your tea and leave?”
He clasped his hands behind his back like some general and strode away, into her room.
She sprang up from the love seat and followed. He was examining the room, studying the photos. He said, passing by the open bathroom door with a quick peek, “The U.S. government is paying for all this and I’ve never taken the time to inspect it. Where’s the other room, over here?” He pasted on a phony smile, walking by, and instantly she understood why his wife had divorced him.
In the other room, he put his hands in his pockets and looked at the photography equipment she’d set up: the white roll of backdrop paper high on two stands; light stands and umbrella flashes arranged all around. “How come you’ve never taken studio pictures of me?” He turned to her, one eyebrow cocked. “Always wanted some special pictures done, private session, you know what I mean? You’ve never offered, how come?” Leering at her now, stepping toward her. “You take pictures like that with the drug runner? Does he pose for you? You pose for him?”
“You need to leave,” she said.
He came closer, so close that she had to take a step back. “Nasty pictures, that’s what he likes?”
“Malone…”
“Nasty things, you and him? But hey,” Malone’s voice rising, “only for investigative purposes of course.” He was almost touching her, all six feet two, two hundred and odd pounds of acrophobic, Ivy League, Republican poster boy looming over her with a glint of mean in his eyes; lips pinched, jaw clenched.
“Stop,” she said, a hand up between them; her voice sounded like a young girl’s. She felt like a young girl, with him bearing down, shuffling closer.
“What? Stop what? Telling you the truth? The hard facts? Like the ones you choose not to tell us whenever we’re”—he showed her the gap between his thumb and forefinger—“this close? Huh?” He was on top of her now, breath smelling like sushi. “Tell me, what does this man do for you that’s got you so completely”—he tapped her on the foreheard—“screwed up?”
She recoiled, her left heel touching the wall, and when he bumped her she glanced to the left, reached out and grabbed the heavy zoom lens on the worktable. “You don’t get away from me right this second I’m swinging at you so hard you’re going to see God.”
He cut his eyes at the lens. Stepped back.
“You need to leave now.”
He crossed over to the window. He put his hands in his pockets and looked out. After a moment he said, “So this is the view you have. Splendid, you can see his entire house.” He craned his neck. “What’s that in the backyard … a clothesline? A clothesline?” He said over his shoulder, “Can’t afford a dryer, all the money he makes? Too much tucked away in mutual funds and IRAs, must be. You ever discuss money with him, in the midst of pillow talk?”
“Get out.”
Malone did some neck rolls. “Let me tell you something so there are no further misunderstandings, Candice. We will be expecting calls from you this week. One way or the other. This asshole makes any move out that gate, doesn’t matter for what—once he’s out, you place a call.”
“You trust me to do that?”
Malone said, “Now, now,” and shook his head. “Don’t be so sensitive. I’m ticked off for a reason. You’re still a professional. We need you more than ever to do this. Keep a sharp eye out. He moves, you call, and then report to the office immediately.” He turned away from the window. “Any questions?”
“None.”
They stared at each other, before Malone exhaled, eyes softening. “Evaluation question. Where do you see yourself five years from now?”
She was still holding the lens and she looked at it, put it on the table. On a beach somewhere, she wanted to say. Snapping photos, in a bikini … with a cold bottle of beer waiting in a cooler on a towel, under a huge umbrella.
Malone’s lips turned down bitterly. “Me? I want to be doing something else. These people in this piece of shit place don’t want to help themselves, then to hell with ’em. But … that? That’s the future.” He checked his watch and walked out of the room. “Yolanda’s waiting for me down the street. That’s a pretty name, isn’t it, Yolanda? She’s also sexy. Not as hot as you, I’ll admit, but she’ll do.”
From a distance came the sound of a ringing phone. Malone looked toward the window. “Is that … that’s his phone you hear so clearly?”
Candice nodded. “When his windows are open.”
“Wow,” Malone said, with a curious frown like he was puzzling over something, then he dipped his head so that they were eye level. “Make it happen, Candice.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Harvey said, “Okay then. Sure everything’s cool? Okay then, see you later,” and he put down the phone. He kept his hand on it a few seconds, thinking, before he stood up.
“What’s the matter?” Gert said.
“Shit, I don’t know … Nothing. Riley just sounds a little strange.”
“Nervous, you mean?”
“Like me, you mean?”
Gert took hold of his hand and rubbed it between hers, and massaged his palm, bending and rotating his fingers.
“That feels good.”
“Pressure points,” she said, thumb-kneading the center of his palm. “Helps you relax. Focus. Don’t be nervous.”
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the headboard. The window curtains moved in the light breeze. They could hear Miles downstairs locking up the house, TV going off. Miles retiring for the night. Harvey said, “What time is it?”
“Twenty to midnight.”
“Time to go.” He lowered one foot to the floor and waited for his courage to collect. “Maybe I better have a quick drink.”
“No,” Gert said, grabbing the other hand and starting on the palm, rotating the wrist. “Try to feel it, what I’m doing here.”
“Just a little toot. Riley left a flask of bourbon in the kitchen.”
Gert covered his face with a hand and brushed downward, fingers feathering to his chin and up again. “Breeeeathe … breeeeathe … Yes, close your eyes…”
“I should go, Gert.”
“Breeeeathe … Oh, Harvey,” sounding tearful. “I want this to happen fast and you come back and we go home again, I miss my house, I miss Sir Belly. I just want to go home.”
“Hey, Gert, don’t do this.”
“I’m trying to be strong, baby, I’m trying but I miss my home. I don’t want to go to Georgetown, I don’t know Guyana anymore.”
“If I’d’ve known getting in with Lopez woulda brought all of this I’d never—”
“Shhh,” and she clamped her hand over his mouth. “Okay, sorry … no regrets. Breeeathe, yeees…” Her fingers feathering up and down. “I did everything like you said. I booked the room in that hotel by the airport, I have the bags packed. I’ll pray, I’ll think positive thoughts.”
He smiled at her and let her fuss with his hair, finger-brushing it back, like he was going on a job interview. Finally, he said, “I really got to go now,” and swung his other leg off the bed and stood up. “One quick shot of liquid courage and I’m gone.”
Leaving the room, he caught sight of himself in the dresser mirror, a shortish man in black shirt, black jeans, a slim and sharp-boned woman following closely with worry on her face. He found the flask in a high kitchen cabinet and had a nip, then two more. Wiped his lips, and retied his boots for no other reason than not to have to look at Gert’s forlorn
face, which was getting to him, stirring up doubts.
At the bottom of the stairs, just before he opened the door, Gert told him wait and lifted her gold chain necklace over her head. A crucifix dangled from it. She looped it over his head, having trouble with the fit, working it down and scraping his nose in the process. “There.” She flattened the crucifix against his chest. “This’ll help.”
He looked at her. “Since when you’ve been so religious?”
“I believe that Jesus Christ our Lord will protect all who humble themselves before him and have faith in his power to protect good people from thieves and fuckers who seek to do us harm. I really do.”
* * *
Riley lay in bed, arms laced behind his head, staring at the water stains on the ceiling. The map of Italy?
Not really. More like his lack of imagination. How come everybody always described a cloud or maybe a stain like this one as resembling the map of Italy? See the boot right there!
For the moment he was happy that his mind was wandering.…
He rolled his head to one side. The digital on the nightstand read 12:09. He got out of bed, turned off the lights and stretched out again in the dark, one foot on the floor. He watched the red digits flicker and change. 12:10.
He sat up, looked out his window into the bluish moonlight on the grass and put his head in his hands and said, “I must be stupid.” He rose, took a deep breath and stepped over the pistol and cash and passport to go to the bathroom, to concentrate on something, anything else. Like shaving with his straight razor.…
No way, he wouldn’t dare, not now. He washed his face instead, combed his hair. He picked up his toothbrush and stared at himself in the mirror. “You’ve been played,” he said. “You know that? You have been well played.”
He tossed the toothbrush on the counter, marched out and picked up the pistol off the carpet, jammed it into the waistband of his shorts. He snagged a semiclean shirt off the bedpost and left the house barefooted, not bothering to button the shirt, the door banging shut behind him.
A light was on in Candice’s house, in the spare room. There was nobody on the street, as far as he could see, no neighbors hanging out on their porches or at their front gates or on their steps. Quietly, he opened Candice’s gate and left it ajar. He padded up the stairs and onto the porch. The windows were open and he could hear soft jazz lilting through like life was oh so placid, and with the stove hood light on, it was such a mellow little scene. He felt that powerful knot in his throat. He tried the door—unlocked, the knob turning. Careless, Candice, careless.
The door hinges squeaked, and Candice said from the spare room, “Who’s that? Who’s there?” rushing out to the living room, clutching a camera lens as he stepped into the house and said, “It’s me, it’s just me.”
“Riley,” she said, “hey, did I forget to lock the door?”
He closed it and flipped the lock. He stared at her.
“Riley?”
Her voice sounded the same, but he was no longer believing the act.
She said, “What’s wrong?”
She frowned, looked at him curiously as he came forward, reached behind. “I’m here to show you what a thug looks like. Want to see a thug?”
He drew his gun and gripped it low. He smacked his bare chest twice when he said, “This is what a thug looks like, special agent. He’s here in front of you. See him?” Slapped his chest and grinned, “No, don’t be scared, this is what you expected to find all along. What do you think?” He held both arms out at his sides, feet apart. “Go ahead, take a picture, baby. Take your last one of me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Harvey drove Miles’s old Taurus up the Northern Highway to Bella Vista. He turned into the development and hung a series of lefts and rights along cracked and bumpy streets, toward the older houses in the back.
He stopped in front of a split-level with a steep zinc roof and Spanish-style railings. He looked at the radio clock. 12:53. Early. He wanted to wait in the car till 1:00 but he’d seen a figure come to the window and didn’t want to seem too eager to please by arriving too soon. Didn’t want to get them suspicious either by sitting out here. A man just could not win. He opened the car door and thought, Here goes.
First thing, happened immediately after he stepped inside, wiping his boots and trying to keep his eyes level, definitely not shifty-eyed—they started mocking him, in particular, for the clothes and the crucifix he’d forgotten to tuck inside his shirt.
“The mysterious man in black,” Lopez said, slumped in a leather chair under a standing lamp in a corner.
The gaunt-faced man who was closing the door now said, “You a man of the cloth?”
This brought a guffaw from a potbellied younger guy with short dreads, smoking a blunt by the open sliding door. “Fucking Zorro.”
Lopez was working a newspaper crossword puzzle. “Start calling you Father Doolittle.”
Thing was, they were all in dark clothes themselves, so now Harvey was annoyed. “It’s you told me to dress like this.” Directing a hard stare at Lopez.
Lopez gave him a long look and chuckled. “Don’t mind us, come and grab a chair.”
He introduced the men, Busha the stout one, Tic Tac, the gaunt-face—street names. Harvey said he thought he’d seen Tic Tac before. The man shrugged. “Corporal, in another life,’ ” he said and grinned, showing crooked bottom teeth.
Busha moved away from the sliding door and offered the blunt. “Hold some, Clock.”
Which led Harvey to understand that he was probably going to be the butt of the jokes tonight, the shit-bucket carrier. “Nah, I’m cool,” Harvey said, waving it away.
Busha held the thing in front of Harvey’s face, smoke curling up. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure you sure?”
Harvey pulled back from the smoke burning his eyes, Busha smiling down. Harvey said, “Do me a favor, potner. Call me by my name. Harvey.”
Busha glanced around, grinning, seeing if anybody else heard. Lopez was looking at them, and not smiling.
Busha left Harvey and pulled a chair at the dining room table and sat. Tic Tac picked up a paperback that was lying pages down on the table and sat across from him. Busha smoked; Tic Tac read. Lopez worked his crossword, pencil scratching and erasing. He said, under his breath, “What the hell’s Bath separatists?”
What the hell are we waiting on, is what Harvey wanted to know.
Busha lifted himself off the chair and peeked out the window by the front door, returned to his chair.
Tic Tac said, “What this mean—pantheon?”
Lopez lowered his pencil and reflected. “That’s … well…”
Busha beat him to it. “I just seen this thing on TV ’bout that. The old place in Rome where the lions used to slaughter the Christians, back in ancient times.”
Tic Tac nodded with appreciation.
Lopez turned to Harvey. “You ready?”
Ready? He wished it was over. He said, “Let’s do it.”
Lopez, who had grown a Clark Gable mustache, seemed obsessed with stroking it, eyes smiling at Harvey. “Then let’s do it,” and he got up and crossed into the dining room and passed through an arched doorway to the back of the house.
Tic Tac tossed his book aside, stood up and stretched, arms to the ceiling, yawning but stopping abruptly as Lopez came back carrying two assault rifles and a shotgun like firewood. He laid them on the table. Busha stood up, as if out of respect. One more trip to the back of the house and all the equipment lay on the table. The black assault rifles, six full magazines, one pump-action shotgun, three semiautomatic pistols, and the Kevlar vests.
They checked and rechecked the guns noisily while Harvey sat very still and tried not to look nervous.
Tic Tac said, “Don’t put that there, Busha, that’s where people eat.”
Busha moved a pistol off a place mat.
Lopez unfolded a map from his shirt pocket, jerking his chin at
Busha. “Enough of that, now.”
Busha mumbled something but he stubbed out the blunt in the kitchen sink.
Lopez and Tic Tac consulted the map spread on the table, pointing here and there, Lopez murmuring serious, Tic Tac shaking his head, disagreeing with something. Lopez reiterated, tapping a spot on the map. They hailed Harvey over and showed him the route in Orange Walk they were going to take, the road off the Northern—just a thread on the map—and the road off that, which wasn’t on the map, Harvey having to follow Lopez’s finger as it slid up to a circle of red ink by the New River.
“That’s the property. We went by this morning. One road in, one road out. Three-quarter ways in, this farmer got a house, white maul, thatch roof, pigs in the backyard. I already talked to him, how I’m interested in property in the area, this and that, so that when we show up there again, it’s like, Hey, no big deal, they’re interested in buying … Busha, why you looking out there again? Pay attention.”
Busha turned away from the window. “Just … you know—”
“See what I told you, that weed gets you all paranoid. Quit smoking that shit.”
Harvey reviewed the map, the arrows in red ink that marked the route. They were all looking at him. Lopez stroking his mustache, Tic Tac fondling a carbine. Lopez said, “Problems?”
Harvey shook his head. “Nope.”
Lopez sniffed. He tilted his chair back and looked at his watch. “Then we wait.” He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and said, “Coffee anyone?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Broken plates, glasses, and a wire dish rack on the kitchen tiles. A puddle of tea and pieces of a shattered cup that had been arm-swept onto the floor.
Riley held on to the counter with both hands, head bowed. The house was quiet except for the soft unmelodic jazz playing on the stereo, his heavy breathing, and the occasional sniffle from Candice, who was sitting on the sofa behind him. He couldn’t stand to look at her, but he couldn’t power up his legs to walk out the door either. His mind kept saying, Leave, don’t look back.