He gave Glo a gentle shoulder squeeze. “Having a good time, I like that.”
“I’m glad you approve, Chester.”
When Glo introduced Maggie, he said, “Canadian, eh?” Maggie laughed with him, dutifully. “A fine country, America’s best friend in a dangerous world. Been up your way several times — don’t want the folks of South Dakota to know, but you Canucks have some fantastic duck hunting. Well, you two gals seem to be getting on like a house on fire.”
He bent to Gloria-May’s cheek, kissed it, and whispered in her ear. Glo seemed not to care if anyone heard her response. “I’m not going to get sloshed.”
Walker’s face seemed to set in cement for a moment; then he turned to Maggie with a forced chuckle. “The bride and I have a few plans tonight to celebrate our anniversary. I want her on her toes.” He winked. “So to speak.” He led his team to the bar, ordering refreshments from Miguel in excellent Spanish.
Just as the orientation slide show was about to begin, Maggie was drawn aside by a thickset, almost neckless man gripping a video camera, who introduced himself as Clayton Boyer, media relations: another Southerner. He was genially forgiving about Maggie having intruded upon this gathering.
“That’s what I call grit. Now, if the truth be known, Maggie, we’re more than happy to have you here. In fact, I have an offer I want you to ponder. I understand you’ve done some magazine writing, and I think we can arrange something with one of the better women’s magazines. A light piece, human interest. How a romance writer stumbled onto Chuck and Gloria-May’s seventh anniversary.”
There was no question: they were having a problem earning mileage from Walker’s Costa Rican pilgrimage. He had been keynote speaker at a conference on terrorism, after which most of the media deserted him. But there could be a hitch to this offer: they would want Walker’s buckles and badges to shine on the page.
“And when did the inspiration for this idea strike?”
“Your fortuitous — and may I say attractive — presence among us today brought it to mind.”
She was sure they had given the matter more thought than that. “I’m not going to write a three-thousand-word commercial – I’d expect a free hand.” Would they wish her to tone down his wife?
“Absolute integrity, that’s our aim, nothing censored. Not asking you to glamourize him, Chuck doesn’t work that way, he believes in telling it like it is – that’s the thrust of his whole damn campaign. Could net you six or seven thousand for a week’s work. Circulation five million.”
Across the room, Senator Walker was glancing at her while talking with his campaign manager, Orvil Schumenbacker. They seemed to be awaiting her reaction. Walker smiled at her, she smiled back; he gave her a snappy salute.
Boyer seemed insistent on writing the article for her. “You’re down here searching for a plot for your next romantic novel and stumble onto the Walkers’ romantic escape to paradise. Here’s a soldier going off to war for the presidency but thoughtful enough to first reward his wife with a tropical holiday.”
“You must have connections with this magazine.”
“Let’s say the publisher is not entirely in the camp of the enemy.”
Maggie found his war-like metaphors grating, but the magazine he named was in every supermarket. “Okay, it could be a good story; I’ll do it.”
“Excellent. We’ll have a chance to sit down together and work some ideas out.”
Despite Boyer’s keenness to orchestrate the desired spin, she was elated; she would actually turn a profit from her expensive holiday. When a good girl gets bad luck, good luck finds her.
The sound of rotor blades drowned further conversation. From the window, she watched the second helicopter lift off, bearing away more of the senator’s entourage. Only two Secret Service agents remained and two aides: Boyer and Schumenbacker, the walrus-sized campaign manager.
Suddenly, the entire building seemed to move; the roof was rattling — and then just as abruptly all was still. “Just a little temblor, folks,” said Jan Nieuwendoork. “Nothing to worry about.”
Jan’s orientation lecture previewed their midday hike to the waterfall – “I advise you to wear your bathing suits.” Maggie was looking forward to it, already in her walking shoes, her camera and bird guide in hand, but Boyer and Schumenbacker seemed exhausted merely from watching the slides and begged off going.
The trail was well-kept but gruelling, three switchback kilometres up the Savegre valley; Maggie had readied herself for wilderness hiking – by bicycling until first snowfall and taking long Sunday treks with her fellow birders. Surprisingly, Gloria-May had little difficulty keeping pace despite having consumed four gins with her lunch. Chuck Walker was in excellent condition, too, though he seemed distracted, observing little around him and moving as if on a forced march to a new jungle base. His two Secret Service men were at his heels. An assistant tour guide was far behind with the AP reporter, Ed Creeley, a slow-walking heavy smoker.
With Jan’s help, Maggie was able to make several entries in the margins of her bird book, a Kiskadee, an Antshrike; she photographed a Long-Tailed Motmot from only three metres away. Not timid, enjoys showing off its clothes. She saw mammals, too: a pair of spider monkeys resting in a tree, a family of coatis – or pizotes, as they were called locally – scampering through the undergrowth. Jan pointed to several small pies on the road that looked like pigs’ droppings.
“White-collared peccaries,” Jan said. “But if they were near, we would smell them and we would be looking for trees to climb – they have sharp teeth, but can’t raise their heads very high.” Jan’s information was often not reassuring.
The trail ended at the waterfall, a scene that might have been lifted from a Disney cartoon: sun sparkling on a pool hollowed out by a twenty-metre cascade roaring down a sheer rock wall, Rough-Winged Swallows chasing white and yellow butterflies that spiralled and swooped above the mist.
“Isn’t this beautiful, Glo,” Walker said, his hand on her shoulder. She squeezed it, then stripped off her sweaty shirt. Not much was hidden behind a string bikini top; the senator looked almost shocked at her choice of swimwear. “Pretty as a picture, and so are you, darling.”
“You sweet-talker, you.” She kissed him lingeringly on the lips. Maggie caught the moment with her camera: the magazine might pay a handsome bonus for such a cover shot. A discriminating reader would gag at the dialogue, however: Walker’s words had sounded forced, stagey. Now he was on his knees, helping Gloria-May untie a knot in her laces.
Maggie heard a whisper at her ear. “What a couple of ham actors.” It was Ed Creeley, the AP reporter, who had finally straggled in, puffing, his bristly face sheened with sweat. Maggie had gathered from earlier cynical comments that he disliked the Walkers.
All she desired right now was a swim in that natural pool. She was the first to jump in — with a flailing splash — and the first to the waterfall. She held on to a rock, exhilarated by the cold pour upon her head, and watched the colonel and his consort toe the water, then slip hand in hand into the pool.
After they had all emerged dripping to dry in the sun, Glo joined Maggie: “Look at the zucchini in that guy’s front pocket,” referring to a protrusion in a pair of Secret Service swimming trunks. Everyone else was striving not to stare at the former showgirl in her daring bikini. Maggie felt almost invisible beside her.
– 3 –
After dinner, Maggie was smearing aloe on her legs when Glo barged into the Jungle House with a bottle of tequila and a bag of sliced lemons. “It’s gals’ night out. I didn’t quite make it onto Chester’s busy agenda. He’s with his fellow athletes, huddling or scrimmaging or whatever they do at their circle jerks. Anyway, I’m so worn out I could fall asleep having an orgasm.”
Maggie accepted Glo’s kiss, then slipped her night dress on over her bra and briefs – growing up with three older brothers had instilled in her a lifelong modesty. “I could use something for the pain.” The backs of her thigh
s were so pink she could sit on them only delicately, and her knees were sore from the climbs.
They poured drinks; Maggie raised her glass. “To your seventh anniversary.”
“Its highlight was a rumble in a restaurant. I have a funny story, but don’t tell that poor critter working for Associated Press. It’s bad media for Chester.”
This was the episode Maggie had heard about in Quepos. She winced as Glo described a ridiculous set-to in which the strength of three Secret Service men had been called upon to subdue Jacques Cardinal.
Maggie was embarrassed slightly – but unsure why – to admit that the gossip she had overheard had inspired her to use the same Slack Cardinal in her next novel, but Glo thought the idea amusing. “Have you got a part for a shy southern belle? ‘Ah do declare, suh, you do say the most wicked thangs.’ ”
Glo offered a physical description of Cardinal for the novel: “Late forties, cute but shy, doesn’t own a comb, six-five and built like a work truck; bay window with love handles, and great glaring green eyes, full of suspicion. Someone has to teach him how to smile.”
Glo perched beside her on the bed, took her hand, and looked at her meaningfully. “I hired him for a private cruise — out of sheer boredom, understand? – to escape the cigar smoke and beer farts. But I didn’t tell Chester, and I had to threaten the agent who tracked me down. If this shows up in your book, know that I still have friends in Las Vegas who break arms.”
Maggie looked at her skeptically. What could anyone do in a kayak? Sex would seem impossible even in one built for two.
“Light flirting was the most I had in mind, just a little frolic.” She hesitated, as if unsure what more to divulge.
Maggie, who was more titillated than shocked, hoped Glo was not censoring. He drew her trembling body onto the wet sand, his glaring green eyes hot with desire. “Well? What happened?”
“Shit all, honey; he was as nervous as a turkey on Thanksgiving eve. Reacted like I was trying to bust his balls.”
Maggie felt let down; the story lacked an appropriately erotic punchline.
“Chester says he has a record of screwing up. Delete – I’m not supposed to say that. Classified shit. Anyway, Cardinal has a right curious background. Change of subject. You look good in this joint; it’s Jane of the Jungle in her tree house. Let me see one of your wet reads.”
Maggie rummaged in her bag for one of her Nancy Wards. She hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult to draw details about Slack Cardinal from the loose lips of her confidant. A state secret, a nervous screw-up of a spy with a dark history: that did not tally with her other meagre information.
The sign on his shop had said, “Closed until creativity restored.” What mysteries were concealed behind the bay window of the brooding kayak man?
– 4 –
Maggie was woken by the trilling of nature’s early risers. She threw back her mosquito net, breathed in the pungent tropical air, picked up pen and pad — she enjoyed writing during the early morning while the world was stretching awake. It was a time of inspiration. This was her second day at Eco-Rico Lodge: her idyll was passing too quickly. Tomorrow evening she would return to the beaches of Manuel Antonio for a week of tropical tanning before retreating north. She shivered at the thought of cold winds whipping across the stubble.
Here she could lie under light cover all night, with the windows open, and awake not to the cruel jangling of an alarm clock but to serenades of birds. She could not count the number of melodies in their repertoires. Her Birds of Central America recited light-hearted names: Black-Capped Pygmy-Tyrants, Scaly-Throated Leafscrapers.
There were bugs, naturally: Bare-Necked Umbrellabirds must eat. Some tropical species were delightful: fairylike fireflies that danced through the dark of the forest, priggish praying mantises, plodding rhinoceros beetles.
She had seen three species of monkeys: the grumpy, slow-moving ones were howlers, and their harrowing whoofs were resounding outside her window at this moment, though they could be a mile away. She had been shown a glass frog, almost transparent, and a gaudy poison-dart frog; she had seen tracks of a jaguaroundi.
Yesterday, Maggie had stared in awe at the green living sea of the canopy before being lowered on harness and zip line to a catwalk in the treetops. She’d found she was not much in fear of the heights despite her phobia about flying. Later, a steep hike had taken them up a trail to the hot springs, where they had luxuriated in a rock-lined bathing pool, steam billowing into the cool mountain air.
Enraptured by all that she beheld, her holiday gloriously recovered from its disastrous start, she was already plotting her return next winter. Maybe she would bump into Pablo Esquivel. Maybe she would thank him. Maybe she should stop thinking about him — why was he still popping into her mind? He was yesterday’s boring tragedy.
Glo had attached herself to her, always there, stride by stride, zip line to zip line. Though she smoked and drank to some excess – maintaining she was supposed to be on a “damn holiday” – she was naturally athletic and kept trim: stretch exercises for half an hour every morning and evening, followed by vigorous aerobics. After dinner, she would loll on a hammock with a gin and tonic and a Nancy Ward romance. She is a lawyer. He is a cop. When they clash in court, they discover they share a strange passion.
Glo entertained Maggie enormously; they had bonded like schoolgirls in a camp dormitory. But, to Maggie’s mind, shoot-from-the-hip Gloria-May made an odd pairing with stern, ambitious Chester Walker. Still, she clearly owned his heart, and could melt him with a word or a touch.
Maggie bent to her creative labours at her balcony table. It was becoming a frolic to insinuate real people into her fiction: a gangly heroine, a glib villain, a shy work truck with a dark past. What role could she assign to a Southern temptress or to a square-jawed ex-Marine officer?
His T-shirt smeared with grease, Jacques pulled himself from under his rust-eaten Jeep. “This is as far as this baby is going today. It’s a connecting rod.”
Fiona shrugged into her heavy packsack. “Let’s walk.”
“Let’s not. We’ll camp here; this is the heat of the day.”
His bossiness irked her. Fiona found the fellow sufficiently capable, however sour and laconic, but she worried that he might show another face once he dipped into the litre of whisky she had seen him stow in his pack.
“Suit yourself.” She marched up the track alone.
Fiona was disappointed when she reached the rushing river’s edge; her plan to follow it upstream was thwarted by a twenty-metre cascade falling almost vertically from a rocky ridge. This was a mortifying defeat in the battle of wills with Dr. Cardinal; she would be forced to swallow her pride, rejoin him.
But first she would sample the pool hollowed out by the falls. She stripped off all her clothes, then arced like an arrow, feeling the cold fresh snap of the water as it engulfed her.
Not long afterwards, as she was floating, enjoying the sun on her body, she opened her myopic eyes to behold a large humanoid shape looking down at her. “The lady’s even prettier when she blushes. Found yourself a nice spot.”
With one fluid motion, Jacques pulled his shirt over his tangle of red hair, exposing a broad chest and a waist thickened with careless living. Unbuckling his trousers and dropping his shorts, she turned her eyes away as he hurtled into the water.
Maggie reconstructed this last mangled sentence, planted a period at the end, then tended to her cramped toes. A story was definitely unfolding; the seeds of danger and romance were planted, erotic fertilizer added.
She put her manuscript aside at the sound of the breakfast gong. This morning’s schedule included an easy meander down a valley, then an interview with Senator Walker. Because he was frequently secluded with his two advisers, Maggie’s opportunities to chat with him had been brief and limited. Tomorrow one of the helicopters was returning to take Chester (he regarded that name as “wimpy,” Glo had confided) back to Washington “for vital affairs of state.”
A champagne celebration was scheduled for after lunch: this was anniversary day. “No fancy folderol,” Chuck said, “that’s an order; we’re just having a casual glass of cheer with friends.”
The dining room was deserted except for the AP reporter, Ed Creeley. Maggie poured herself a coffee and joined him, determined to endure his cynicism.
“Got any idea why we’re here, Schneider? Guy’s seeking the Republican nomination; what’s he doing in this shithole, trying to tie up the monkey vote?”
“Maybe it’s the female vote he’s after.”
“That why they brought you in? To write about his romantic escape to paradise?”
Despite Maggie’s repeated assurance that she was not Walker’s secret hireling, retained weeks ago, Creeley insisted she was not here coincidentally: the scenario satisfied his need to find evil machinations everywhere.
“Guy’s a lightweight. He got in by a fluky few thousand votes. He’s a senator for one measly year and suddenly he sees himself as leader of the free world? Chuck’s got as much chance getting past the primaries as a frog in a flushing toilet. Especially with that albatross around his neck.”
That seemed an awkward metaphor to describe Gloria-May but the reporter could be right: despite her beauty and her buoyant openness (or because of it), her tart tongue seemed a political liability.
“Thank God,” Creeley said, “because imagine his itchy fucking finger on the trigger.”
The Laughing Falcon Page 8