by David Pierce
"Mega gross," said Doris as I was trying the framed horror in various positions on my desktop.
"I think it looks rather sweet and touching," I said.
It was about eleven when we figured we had done all we could do for one day. The furniture was in place, also the (unconnected) telex, the phones plugged in and working. Benny had somehow hooked up the intercom between the two rooms, and all our desks had the appropriate signs on them (Benny's read "B. Keith, Assistant Director"; Doris's, "D. Day, Inquiries") plus a scattering of diaries, rotary files, pencil sharpeners, and the like. Doris had unpacked her shopping bag, which contained of course a small bouquet of flowers, a vase for same, a paperback by someone called Germaine Greer, probably one of those regency romances, also a large coffee cup with a picture of a cat drinking milk on it. I was surprised she didn't pull out a picture of Willing Boy too, talking about personal touches.
And we had, also slightly damp, correctly headed company stationery in the drawers of all our desks, and the top drawer of one of the green filing cabinets was impressively stuffed with cardboard folders, which were themselves impressively stuffed with blank paper. Doris applied a few finishing touches here and there: she crumpled up some scraps of paper and chucked them into the wastepaper baskets; she tangled up her telephone line to make it look used; she creased up the covers of the new telephone books that Benny had scored along with the phones—and so on.
We were taking a last look around to admire our handiwork when Benny said, "Samples. We should have samples around in case we get a visit from Don Rafael. Or his neighbor's sister."
"Damn," I said.
"A desk lamp for me," Doris said. "Otherwise it looks pretty good."
"It sure does, gang," I said, making sure the suitcase I was going to leave behind was locked. "It looks like we're in business."
"I thought that was the plan," said Doris.
"Speaking of which," Benny said, "what is the plan for mañana?"
"Mañana," I said, "after picking up some samples, I figured you and me'd go straight to jail, without stopping to collect anything else."
"What about your wits?" said Doris.
"Those we might need," I said.
"Rotsa ruck, Melvin," said Doris.
CHAPTER TEN
"The hammock you have just purchased was handwoven in the State of Yucatán, in southern Mexico. The hammock is a very important part of Yucatán life. 99% of the population in the State of Yucatán owns and uses the hammock. 87% of them have been born, sleep, and probably will die in a hammock. For 53% of the Yucatán people, the hammock is the only piece of furniture in the house, being used as a chair in the day and a bed at night."
"And who penned this foray into literature?" I inquired, holding up the tag I was reading.
"I did," Benny called down.
There was more: "The hammock consists of two parts: the Body (or Bed), and the Connecting Ends (or Arms). They are woven on a vertical loom consisting of two posts planted in the ground and two horizontal pieces of wood connecting them at top and bottom. It takes 19 hours to make the smallest hammock, giving you an idea of the work that is required to weave a hammock."
"Shakespeare it ain't," I said. "And I suppose you made up the figures too."
"There you're wrong," he said. "I translated them from something Jorge wrote."
It was the following morning after a late breakfast, and Benny and I were at his friend Jorge Bazu's hammock emporium down on 56th and I was learning far more about hammocks than I cared to. Doris had toddled off to the office to hold the fort and maintain our presence there and also, in between writing in the diary she was keeping, to do such chores as dropping off in Don Rafael's office a handful of our new business cards, with our new telephone number neatly written in. She was also to man—or is it woman?—the phone in case he called, and also to tell Freddy or Don Rafael, if either stopped by to see how we were settling in, that the bosses were out on a purchasing expedition, which, as it turned out, is exactly what we were doing.
Or rather what Benny was doing. Benny was up a ladder selecting hammocks from the shelves full of them that ran all down one side of Jorge's long, narrow shop. The shelves on the other side of the store held skeins of cotton string out of which the hammocks were woven. When Benny found a hammock he liked, he tossed it down to Jorge's number two son, Carlos, who stacked it along with all the others, which were piling up five-deep on the counter.
In twenty minutes Benny had selected 205, mostly the larger sizes, the 10s and 12s. When I asked him out of idle curiosity what his criterion for selection was—was it mayhap their color?—he said no, it was closeness of weave, as in Persian carpets. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the sight of Benny teetering atop a rickety ladder—and for a strictly legitimate cause. It was surely a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, like me eating in that Ethiopian restaurant out on Sunset.
How the weavers of the fool things ever made a nickel, God only knows. They bought the string and the polyester end bits from Jorge to begin with, then sold the finished products back to him—after, you will recall, some nineteen hours' labor on each—and guys like Benny bought the hammocks off Jorge for ridiculously low prices, say from $5.50 U.S. for a single up to maybe $9.50 for a family size. After Jorge took his profit out of both ends of the transaction, that left, say, on the average five bucks for the weaver, for all those hours, which works out to such a pathetic hourly wage I won't even bother to work it out even if I could. Benjamin later told me he had a deal with a hardware chain operating out of San Diego that took roughly five thousand a year, depending on availability, but Benny had to prepack them and put into each a copy of his literature and pay for the air freight and insurance and broker's commission—so all he made out of the whole deal was a goodly number of thousands of dollars, for which he had to visit Mérida once in a while (expenses deductible) and spend a half-hour up a ladder. Who wouldn't do likewise, I'm sure? Of course, Benny did have that dreadful struggle with his larcenous conscience all the while.
After settling accounts with Jorge, arranging for the packaging and the transportation of two hundred of the hammocks to the air freight office in Jorge's old truck, we shook hands all round, departed, went back to our hotel, deposited our five sample hammocks, changed clothes, then made our way around to the back of the hotel, where Benny's car was parked. Suitably attired and even more suitably credentialed, off we went to jail.
We had just passed the airport turnoff west of Mérida and were continuing on westward when I asked Benny how in the world he'd ever stumbled on the lowly hammock as a way to make a buck.
"Carlos, who you met, has an older brother," he said. "Paco. He's not in the store much anymore. He was into pearls when I met him—what?—six, seven years ago, on the Isla Mujeres. I probably met him through Big Jeff, who knew everyone in town, especially everyone who was into things like pearls or silver or coral or running booze or, I blush to say, D-O-P-E. So I put up the capital, and what Paco did was buy ten thousand dollars' worth of pearls from one of his connections, then we walked them across the Tex-Mex border to Brownsville, well strapped up, and a few days later sold them to another of his connections for twenty-two five. Next time down I met Paco's pop, Jorge, and the rest is history."
"So is that," I remarked, pointing to the remains of what once must have been a fabulous mansion set back off the main road but was now a total ruin. "Jesus, there's another one," I said a few minutes later. "What were they doing out here anyway, shooting a remake of Gone With the Wind?"
"Sisal," said Benny. "All those things that are cactuses to you, they used to make rope from. As in hemp. There were fortunes being made around here, and then guess what?"
"The dreaded sisal weevil?" I guessed.
"Nylon rope," he said, "got invented, putting most of those guys out of work." He waved at two peons who were standing patiently at a crossroads waiting for their lift. They were dressed in the typical laborer's get-up of loose white pants, white shirt, straw
hat, sandals made from old rubber tires, with machetes strung by a cord around their necks. One of them waved back without putting too much energy into it.
"I once ran across a guy," I said, "you know the kind of guy I mean, the kind that never takes baths but instead rubs himself all over with a special dry mud from Nepal. Well, this guy invented and sold a machine that extracted the juice from things like welcome mats and bits of traditional, non-nylon rope, which as you just mentioned are made of hemp, which as you didn't mention is a close relative of the pot plant. So what the guy was saying was you could get high from drinking your old welcome mat. I never tried it myself, although it is true to say I have downed many an exotic tipple in my travels."
"Me neither," said Benny, who was beginning to perspire slightly because it was hot and he was attired, as I was, in a lightweight conservative suit, white shirt, and tie. "I once chewed up and swallowed 120 morning glory seeds, Celestial Pink, I believe they were. Boy, did I get high. Boy, did I get sick first."
We drove on for a while through the flat and monotonous terrain. An occasional slatted truck with a load of campesinos in the back passed us and once or twice a dusty car. Occasionally we glimpsed some unhappy-looking campesinos at work in what was left of the maguey cactus fields. Once we saw what was left of an armadillo someone had run over. A few minutes after that I had my first sight of the clink called the Second of February, which some might find a slightly bizarre name for a clink—me included, at first—but then again, how does one name a prison? Usually after its location, I suppose, as in Dartmoor, which is in Dartmoor, on a moor by the River Dart, or Devil's Island or the Jacksonville Pen, but why not at least endeavor to be more creative and give prisons designer names like Dun-Rovin' or Bide-A-Wee or, if you want to use a date, how about Father's Day or maybe April Fools? What's in a name, anyway? Wouldst not a rose smell as sweet if it wouldst be called instead limburger cheese? Not to me it wouldnst.
I was nervous is what I was, which is why my mind, usually so precisely focused, was chattering away in so aimless a fashion. I had been nervous for the last few days and trying, with a notable lack of success, to hide the fact behind those two old standbys—thinly disguised insults and forced humor. True, I did have a plan of sorts, but there were a lot of details still to be worked out and who knew if it would work anyway and we were a long way from home and time was going by and Billy was still marking the days off on a cell wall and one mistake from his would-be heroic rescuers and we'd be doing the same.
And if we did get him out, then what? My loyal, doughty assistants, being more or less of a normal height—i.e., short—might be able, suitably camouflaged, to pass undetected in a crowd of Méridans, but where and how could a Goliath hide in a land of Toulouse-Lautrecs?
I became even more nervous the closer we got to Febrero Segundo, and when I got that first glimpse of it, I achieved a lifetime personal best.
We'd just topped a small rise in the road, and there it was ahead of us and off to our left at the end of a few hundred yards of dirt road. Benny pulled over and pulled up. About all we could see from our viewpoint were the walls, which were bad enough—twenty feet high, we estimated, laid out, in a large rectangle with turrets at the corners and another above the huge front door and yet another one in the center of the rear wall opposite the entrance. Around the walls for two hundred yards or so in all directions, the scrub and maguey had been burned to give the guards a clear field of fire. A Mexican flag hung limply above the front turret. We could see that all the turrets were manned and the tops of the walls were being patrolled as well.
I looked at Benny the Boy.
Benny the Boy looked at me.
"A piece of cake," he said, snapping his fingers. I had to laugh.
Then he said, "If you don't mind me asking, Victor, what is it we hope to achieve today?"
"You got me there, pal." I sighed. "All right. We would like a look around. I thought it might be a good idea for us to have our look around when the big boss isn't in, which could give us an excuse to go back another time and see him, which would give us a second look around. I'd also like to see how Billy is and let him know we're on the case and to warn him to go along with whatever it is we come up with. But hell, I don't know if we can bluff our way in to see him. In a lot of jails only immediate family and legally interested parties get to visit, and God knows what the system is down here. Maybe at least we can get some kind of word in to the poor stiff."
"No problem there," said Benny. "If I can't find out what the visiting policy is any other way, I'll just call them up and ask."
"In that case," I said, "wagons roll, preferably to the nearest bar with a phone."
So we rolled to the nearest bar—a nameless, tin-roofed café in that small, untidy cluster of enterprises at the crossroads that Benny had mentioned—parked, and sat at a tin table outside that told us to drink Corona beer, not that I had to be told. The rotund owner came smartly out from behind his homemade tin bar to take our orders; being on duty, more or less, we had to settle for Pepsi-Colas. When he came back with them, he inquired if we were by any chance visiting the prison up the road.
We were, Benny told him.
Not, the owner hoped, to visit some unfortunate friend or—and it pained one to even contemplate it—some relative?
"Luckily, no," said Benny. "A small business matter was all. But merely out of idle curiosity, is it a difficult matter getting in to visit a dear one?" He winked at me and said in an undertone, "I think we just saved us a phone call."
With his customary adroitness Benny elicited the following interesting information over the next five minutes: there were at present some six hundred men and twelve women in Febrero Segundo; normal visiting hours were from two till four weekdays, all day Saturday, and Sunday afternoon; permission for nonfamily to visit seemed to depend on the whim of el commandante; and visitors were permitted to take in food, clean clothes, and soap and the like but naturally no alcohol, drugs, or provocative reading material.
"I should hope not," said Benny, affecting to be deeply shocked.
As all this was going on, I was observing four off-duty guards, with their jackets off, making their way up the dirt road from the prison toward us. They crossed the main road without looking both ways and went into the even more dilapidated cantina next to ours. A minute later four others left the cantina and headed without excessive speed back to the prison.
"Must be lunchtime," said my friend. "Not a bad idea." He ordered a plate of delicacies from the owner, who bustled off to consult his cookbook.
A few moments later Benny was liberally sprinkling hot sauce on the third of whatever it was he was eating. "Chili today, but hot tamale," he said. At that moment a Jeep left the prison and headed toward us; as the driver wheeled into the main road with a flourish, I noticed the vehicle was brand-new and sparkling clean. A man in a neat gray uniform complete with cap sat in the backseat looking through a report of some kind.
"¿El commandante?" Benny asked the owner.
"Himself."
"Does he ever stop here for lunch?"
The owner laughed. "Not him," he said, "he prefers his tacos served by a pretty maid."
"No offense intended," Benny said, "but who doesn't?"
The owner showed us his gold inlays again.
I sprung for the repast and refreshments, we got back into the boiling hot Chevy, this time me in the backseat, and we drove up the dirt road to Febrero Segundo. As we got closer, we saw the dirty white concrete block walls were even higher than we'd guessed.
"There's a wall not built to scale," Benny said.
"What's come over you, kid?" I said. "That's two awful puns in five minutes."
"You're not the only one who's nervous," he said.
"I didn't know it showed."
The front entrance was a massive wooden door with a curved top, above which the turret loomed for another twenty feet or so. We stopped at the door, and Benny tooted the horn. A guard looked down a
t us from the turret and then turned away again.
"Why did you do that?" I asked him. "There doesn't seem to be all that much traffic around."
"That sign there told me to," he said, pointing with a thumb.
"Oh," I said. "Pardon ma mouf'."
After a minute an elderly guard in a gray uniform unbuttoned at the neck peeked out through a grille in the door, then swung the main gate open for us. In we went, slowly, into a sort of tunnel. The gate swung shut behind us. Up the tunnel in front of us was a second gate, this one made of iron bars, through which we could see a bare space with a soccer goal. The first guard disappeared into a small room on our left. After another moment, a second, younger man emerged, the butt of what looked like an antitank gun showing in his unbuttoned holster; he came over to us and asked us politely to please state our business.
I handed him my card. It read, simply but elegantly: V. Blackman. U.S. Dept. of the Interior.
Benny handed him his, which read, simply but elegantly: B. Keith. U.S. Dept. of the Interior.
The guard looked them over, on both sides, then returned them to us. Then he asked Benny to pardon his ignorance, but what exactly was the business of the U.S. Department of the Interior?
Benny kindly relayed the question to me, so I said smoothly, "Our business is concerned with the internal security of the nation."