The Laughing Falcon

by William Deverell

  “Looked like you had some training,” Walker said. “Military?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Well, keep it up, soldier.” A resonant deep voice, it carried well and with authority.

  “Damn rights,” said Gloria-May Walker, “y’all keep it up now.” Throaty, melodic, the sound of southern bells.

  Juan Camacho tore his eyes off her tits and nodded curtly at Slack, a reluctant token of recognition. Sponging as usual, wolfing down U.S. taxpayer jumbo shrimp, the mayor was behind the squatters, getting them electricity, water, padding himself with a prime cut of the land.

  At the urinal, he felt unsteady, and he had to brace himself with a hand against the wall. He had better reduce his intake. Ocean tour tomorrow, bunch of aging jocks from Philadelphia, sports fishermen, they’d be bringing girls from San José. Two groups this week, he could pay down some of his debt.

  He stood in front of the mirror, crouching to see the top of his head, the tousled red hair streaked with the rust of age, the four days’ growth of beard. Looked like a scarecrow. Le grand slaque, the French had called him, gangly, loose-limbed, but now with the threat of a paunch.

  Gloria-May Walker gave him a look as he squeezed by again, a skeptical raise of a lacquered eyebrow. The senator was carrying on in his bull-moose voice about how you can’t give in to terrorists. “Once you start doing that, you’re playing by their rules.” The ambassador and his wife were nodding, machine-like, no disagreement there. Camacho forced himself to smile at Slack, who pantomimed a sloppy kiss in return. Slack leaned to Gloria-May Walker’s ear. “You might want to warn the senator that guy owns the local whorehouse.” She smelled good, he liked the way she laughed, a lusty chuckle.

  He returned to his stool and to a refilled glass and watched as she whispered to her husband, repeating the calumny, he hoped. A few minutes later, she rose from the table and joined him at the bar. “I hear tell you’re one of the local characters.”

  She was thirty-five, though looked younger: flawless tawny skin, sly wide eyes, golden hair. Her lips were large and fruity. Eager breasts thrust out above an hourglass waist, though the sands of recent time had trickled around her hips and rump.

  “I’ve been around long enough to qualify.”

  She swung gracefully onto the next stool and told him everyone called her Glo. She and her husband had just come from a conference in San José that had bored her to her toes. Chuck was going to take her up to the Eco-Rico Lodge for their wedding anniversary — had he heard of it?

  A luxury joint in which tenderfeet played at roughing it. “You’ll like it. Lots of wildlife.”

  She slowly stretched a leg out for Slack to examine, then crossed it over her knee. “I feel so white next to you. Where do y’all buy a tan like that?”

  Slack should have showered, he felt grungy. She seemed a little drunk, too; he guessed all this flirting was a game she played.

  “So I hear y’all have some sort of river guiding enterprise.”

  He ordered himself to be sober. Might be able to sell a tour here, a senator and a diplomat, it could be lucrative.

  “Ocean, too. Kayaks.” Try not to slur.

  “Sounds like a right nice way to pass a little time.”

  He was a sucker for a Southern accent. Riot nass way to pass tahm. “Nothing to it. Like riding in a big rubber ducky.”

  “Well, now, I think I might just get off taking a ride on your big rubber ducky.”

  Slack regained his balance after nearly slipping off his stool. He looked at Senator Walker, and their eyes locked briefly: a steely look like a warning. But the senator continued his monologue. Terrorists. He’s an expert.

  Slack held a match to Glo Walker’s cigarette, and when his hand wavered, she cupped it in warm slender fingers. Again he smelled her, something expensive, something a honeybee would like. Slack wasn’t going to get into anything here, this also smelled of peril.

  “Chester’s staying at this eco-joint only a couple of days, he has to get back to Washington for a vote. Then I’ll be coming back here by myself.”

  She was about as subtle as a nail through the head. Chuck Walker was rising now, approaching them, his smile taut. A cuckold, obviously, an undesired quality in a politician, hinting of impotence, inability to deliver.

  “Can I stand you another one, soldier?”

  It wasn’t until Slack was well into his latest double rum that he felt everything fall out of focus. He was vaguely aware the others had joined them, Ambassador Higgins and wife, Juan Camacho, wiping shrimp dip from his lips. Senator Walker had claimed his wife, his arm around her waist, and was continuing his oration, a jumble of words, a man obsessed: communism wasn’t defeated by a policy of spineless pacifism, terrorists are the new world enemy, America wasn’t going to stand for it, time to draw the line, can’t neutralize the enemy without adopting a policy of acceptable loss.

  It was the Pentagon bafflegab that finally got to Slack. “Terrorism has piss all to do with warfare,” he heard himself saying, a slurred growl met by an abrupt heavy silence. “It’s theatre. It’s not aimed at the victims, it’s aimed at the people watching, at the fucking CNN cameras.” He was unable to brake his tongue, but suddenly he realized he didn’t care, so he added, “Anyway, who’s the terrorist when some damn schmuck in Baghdad or Belgrade gets his ass blown off by an air-launched missile?”

  The discomfort at the bar was palpable. Eyes shifted away from him, a mistake had been made here, these solid pillars of America had engaged the wrong person, an ugly customer, some kind of agitator. A Secret Service agent was heaving into sight.

  “He’s just a drunk, señor, a beach bum.” It was Camacho.

  The last thing Slack remembered was rising to advance on Camacho, but in doing so falling off his stool. The rest wasn’t clear …

  – 2 –

  At half past five, a defeated moon was turning pale and stars were dimming. The clouds had fled to the horizon, packing up like sandbags, a dam the sun would breach, already sending heralds of its coming, gentle daubs of peach and rose. Hermit crabs scuttled away and hid until the lumbering creature passed on, running barefoot on the silky sands of ebb tide.

  Playa Espadilla, a mile from park entrance to Punta Quepos, thrice each way today, penance for the sins of the night – when, presumably, grave felonious acts had occurred. Slack tried to piece together the ugly scene. He had bruises on arms and shoulders, so more than words had been exchanged. The Secret Service agents had obviously got into it. He had an uncertain picture of one of them intervening when he’d made a grab for Camacho, whom he’d sent sprawling to the floor with a bloody nose. He remembered staring at a spinning ceiling fan. He had somehow got home. He had not been arrested. He wondered why.

  A few bumps, some minor aches. A head-crunching hangover was the worst damage he had suffered, a self-inflicted wound, acceptable loss of brain cells. This morning he had found two hundred-dollar bills in his jeans pocket, how did they get there?

  He moved onto the soft dry sand near the forest better to hear the songbirds awakening in the almond trees and mangroves, and turned to see the sun bulling above the massed cloud, slapping it with colour. Now Slack reached the western end of the beach, El Final, it was called, barred by a wall of rock and jungle, and here he turned to the ocean, he would swim the final mile.

  “Let him go.” Slack remembered Senator Walker giving that order. Why?

  Slack stood panting at the water’s edge, possessing this ephemeral moment, the canvas of ocean and sky, the jungle canopy kissed by sunlight, the whisper of the waves, a pair of sanderlings dipping at the surf’s leavings.

  He ducked a crashing wave and plunged into the water.

  Three hours later, leading a herd of Philadelphia kayakers around the gentle rolling waters surrounding Punta Quepos, Slack was still pondering why he had not been arrested or had his face kicked in last night. Colonel Walker had commanded his troops: “Don’t touch that soldier.” Why?
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  It was hard work remembering, especially since his partner in the inflatable K–2 kept interrupting with the dozen questions most commonly asked. Where you from, anyway? How did you end up here? What’s it cost to buy a chunk of this neck of the woods?

  The talkative red-faced stout preferred to piddle with his paddle while Slack did all the work. Harry Wilder, that’s his handle, pet food sales is his game, specializes in a line called Bow Wow Chow. Harry likes it down here. The girls are cheap, it beats Philadelphia.

  “I wouldn’t advise buying around here, it’s going downhill. Full of thieves and squatters.”

  It was a dilemma. Do you try to earn enough plata to pay your bar bill, or save some wilderness by turning off the tourists? Costa Rica – everyone wants a piece.

  “Now, out there by the park entrance, that’s where you don’t want to swim, it’s an outlet, some of the hotels open their septic tanks in rainy season.”

  “They said it was safe to swim.”

  “What do you expect them to say?”

  That shut Harry Wilder up.

  Maybe he’d been saved from injury and arrest last night because the senator hadn’t wanted to cause an even bigger scene. No. Now he remembered.

  “I’ll tell you about fucking terrorists,” he’d said. He had taken off his shirt, showed them the scars.

  Dear Rocky,

  How’s that for an opening grabber? It’s on its way, sucked bleeding from my soul, a shocker starring a neurotic beach bum and unsung poet. But the author’s identity must be masked from Dr. Zork if he is to foil his evil plan to conquer the world – the nom de plume should be simple, jaunty, but hinting at a life lived dangerously. Harry … everyone loves a Harry. Harry Wilder, how about that? Zap, there he is, crawling from the pages with his bloodshot eyes and foul breath and twisted back.

  I can hardly believe I have been so cheaply bought, selling out my art, pulping some fiction for your mingy two-K advance. I ask but one extra emolument: find me a goddamn publisher for Hymns to a Dying Planet – I don’t care if it’s a back-alley office – and get those poems into print before they rot of the sweat and tears that stain them.

  Most of the ingredients for a convoluted page-turner are available locally, but your recipe also calls for blood, and I’m not sure if I can kill any more, Rock; I can’t even step on a blade of grass without feeling guilt. If not blood, there’s enough shit going on around here to feed the pigs of inspiration: clandestine airfields, roving bands of former Contras, Sicilian capos seeking to expand their empire, cops running the coke pipeline north. Throw in a few coral snakes, poisonous frogs, and rampaging peccaries, shake, stir, bake, and (if personal experience holds) the good guy gets to eat it in the end.

  Or does he die at the beginning, crushed by an enormous writer’s block? I finally figured out why I’m a slow starter, Rocky. I suffer the poet’s curse, the obsessive need for the perfect phrase, flawless, pure, and I get stuck on the opening line. It doesn’t sound right. “Recumbent on the floor, staring at a spinning ceiling fan, Harry Wilder tried to figure out when he’d first become an alcoholic.” Recumbent, as a word, does not sing.

  Other reasons for this long delay in faxing you: my back is killing me, I’m still recovering from a bruised heart, and I’m becoming a raving maniac. But I finally managed to haul out my old Underwood. Despair inspires.

  As you read through my rough initial pages you will observe there has been some early action drawn from a blurred eyewitness account. (The last man standing was not our hero, who, lacking his usual grace, slipped from a stool and banged his head against the bar en route to neutralizing the enemy with new warfare options.)

  But do we not have possibilities? A high-ranking politician, his sultry wife, the brooding Harry Wilder. A hero for the ages! Enough angst to fill a septic tank. The final essential ingredient, the ravishing heroine, is more troublesome. What are we looking for here? – a shy hidden flower plucked from danger and pressed to brave Harry’s lips? Or should she be a bold, hot copy of Gloria-May Walker? Frankly, what Harry needs is good old home cooking – give him someone who can make cabbage rolls, give him someone to love, unadorned, unaffected.

  Look over this initial offering, fax me at the post office, Apartado 92, and tell me if it can suck enough air to stay afloat.

  Happy Hanukkah,

  Jacques.

  – 3 –

  It was four-thirty when Slack rose from his siesta, awakened by the precaria dogs, a bitch in heat, a posse of suitors in braying pursuit. He groaned, stretched, looked out at the neighbouring slum. A television set was on full volume over there, booming out an afternoon soap. Mayor Camacho had bribed installers from ICE, the power company, to bring electricity to his subdivision. Though Slack ran his kitchen on propane, the rest of the house was solar, he’d be damned if he’d hook up to the line, hydro power spews tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

  He wanted to eat out, but he was broke again. A month ago he’d had two grand sitting in his account, but he’d drained it today, dropped off a cheque to Billy Balboa, a gesture of penance for last night. He couldn’t even afford a helper’s wages, he had no one to haul his boats. Then he remembered the two hundred dollars that had mysteriously appeared in his pocket … Where had it come from?

  He made ready to go out, paused, thought of celebrating his good fortune with a small tot, but then remembered his resolution. He was not going to become one of those norteamericanos who come down here and rot from the inside out. Jungle fever, they call it. Not for Slack Cardinal.

  As he was about to lock up, his cell phone rang.

  “You standing me up, honey?”

  Gloria-May Walker. The shock he felt was like touching a hot wire.

  “What happened to our sunset cruise?”

  Two hundred dollars — she’d paid triple, and in advance. “Where are you?”

  “All by my lonely old lonesome outside your empty office.”

  Slack had told her to meet him at the park end of the beach, and he raced there, his inflatable roped to the top of his Land Rover. He had no memory of it, but he must have given her his card.

  He parked behind a Mitsubishi four-wheel rental, her car, he guessed. No official vehicles around. Had she slipped the watchers? It’s the cocktail hour, the senator would be wondering why she wasn’t beside him with her gin fizz.

  There she was on the wet sand, barefoot, a bikini under something gauzy that fluttered in the wind, showing off her Vegas legs. She turned to watch him as he dragged the kayak down to the sand, her hands on her hips, a kind of sexy smirk. This was the kind of woman he feared, aggressive, high expectations.

  “So what do I get for my dough?”

  “A two-hundred-dollar sunset and an hour and a half of hard paddling.”

  “And you guarantee the sunset?”

  “Yeah. But it goes down fast here.”

  “And then what? Comes up just as quick in the morning?”

  Innuendo was flying thick and heavy, she’d somehow decided he was for sale, a gigolo, a whore.

  She removed her wrap, tucked it in the kayak’s sealed hatch. She looked good in just two bits of cloth. He strapped on her life jacket, his hand recoiling when it brushed one of her breasts. He helped her into the front seat and shoved off, the K-2 rising on a swell as he clambered in behind her.

  “I’ve only got time for a fast sunset, anyway, sweetie. Dinner at seven.” The Walkers were at the Si Como No, southern California elegant.

  Gloria-May seemed fit, she wielded a mean paddle, he assumed she did aerobics, something like that. He would take her around Punta Catedral, maybe dip between the islets. He wanted to ask if Senator Walker knew that she had contracted him for this sporting event.

  The sun began to send shafts of colour far across to the high cirrus in the east, the puffballs above the horizon pinking around the edges. The grumble of the surf grew dimmer, and the sounds now were just the splosh of the paddles and Gloria-May humming old show tunes. A
line of pelicans wove above the swells, one dive-bombed into the water, rose again, thrashing from the sea, water pouring from its beak, a fish tail waggling.

  They stopped to watch, then Glo turned to him, a large, full-lipped smile. “You’re hiding out here, aren’t you?”

  Slack felt a twinge in his back as he resumed paddling. “Without apparent success.” Where had she heard this?

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Harry Wilder.”

  “I surely don’t think so. Chester had his security geek look you up on the computer. Leftist shit-disturbing poet, busted for sedition or some damn thing, went underground, settled in Cuba, and got yourself kicked out of there because you wouldn’t toe the party line.”

  She had the whole book, Slack was shocked. Chester must have friends high in the CIA, getting his information that fast. Then in the course of pillow talk he pours it all out to his indiscreet wife.

  “You did a political turnaround, or at least that’s what the CIA thought when they recruited you.”

  Blackmailed into the job, press-ganged, threatened with twenty years in the brig on that false sedition rap. Walker’s geek obviously had top-level clearance, he’d been allowed into the secure files, searched the alias. Cardinal, see Sawchuk. Warning, restricted access.

  “Infiltrated terrorist squads in Paris and the Middle East, I hear tell. Chester says after a dozen years you got so confused you couldn’t figure out which side you were on.” She laughed. The woman was full-throttle blunt, telling tales from the bedroom, critiquing his sterling record of service.

  “Yeah, I couldn’t find my way in from the cold. This is just a kayak tour, it doesn’t come complete with the story of my life.”

  She was paddling again, silent for a moment as she gazed at the sky dancing with the blushing hues of sunset.

  “Who are you hiding from?”