by David Pierce
The guard thought that one over and then, out of boredom or—who knows?—genuine curiosity, inquired precisely what was our interest with Febrero Segundo, which was surely of little or no threat to the internal security of the United States of America, as far as he knew. Of course, he had not seen the twelve o'clock news on television—perhaps a small war had broken out between the two?
And then it dawned on me what his motive was: he was being funny was what he was being. But enough was enough, so I gave him a chilly look and said we were there to have a brief word with his commandante, if such a thing could be arranged.
Naturally it could, but alas his commanding officer was away from the prison and would not be back until roughly five o'clock.
We were desolate, but did not the commanding officer leave someone else in charge when he left the prison, and could we not have a brief word with him instead?
Naturally he did and of course we could, he would arrange it immediately. The guard saluted us and went back into his office. Benny began whistling under his breath. I began sweating under mine. A few more minutes passed in slow motion, or was it hours? Finally the guard returned, saluted us again, handed us a temporary pass, told us to drive straight ahead to el parking, then signaled to someone out of sight at the far gate, which promptly slid open.
Onward, ever onward into the depths of the slammer drove the two gringos, through the second gate and into the prison proper, or at least the prison yard, which was hard-packed sand on which had been roughly chalked out a soccer field and also what looked like a volleyball court and also an area abutting one of the outer walls that must have been for some kind of pelota, or handball. No grass grew in the prison yard of Febrero Segundo and no rose budded either and no butterflies circled in the oppressive noonday heat.
Straight ahead indeed took us to el parking; we pulled up beside a dusty Ford that was neatly parked beside another spanking new Jeep which was neatly parked beside an old but spotless Dodge two-ton. Beside the truck sat that type of enclosed van that is called a Black Maria in some parts of the globe and which is used for transporting groups of prisoners, and beside that an ordinary sedan that had been adapted to transport just one or perhaps two prisoners. There was a thick glass partition between its front and back seats, and the handles to the back doors had been removed; I assumed it took a special key to open them.
The parking lot was directly in front of the administration offices, on one side of which was what looked like a workshop and on the other the kitchens and then a long line of cells. I could tell they were cells because they all had tiny barred windows cleverly positioned so far off the ground that no one but Spiderman could look out. All was quiet in Febrero Segundo; not a creature was stirring except for us and a lizard or two and the guards, so I guessed that the inmates were having a siesta after their mouth-watering luncheon.
After we'd parked and taken a discreet gander around, Benny got out, opened the door for me, his better, then went up to a bell that was set in the wall beside the wooden door labeled Administration, and pushed it. A few more moments, or decades, passed. Yet another grille opened. A face peered out. We peered back. The face said something. Benny held up our pass. The face disappeared. The door opened. We entered.
We found ourselves in a small reception area that contained a desk on one side and a barred and fenced-in passageway on the other, with a long counter in front of it, presumably where visitors and their unprovocative goods were searched. The guard who let us in unlocked a second door behind his desk and bade us follow him. We did, into a second office where three male secretaries or guards or office workers were listlessly pecking away at old-fashioned upright typewriters while a fourth, one of those we'd just seen leaving the beanery next to ours, manned the equally antiquated telephone switchboard, the kind where you have to manually connect the caller with who he's calling by sticking a metal-tipped cord into the right socket. Next to him was another door on which there was also a sign: Lt. Joaquín Esparza, Sub-Commandante, it read.
Our guide knocked twice, smartly. A voice called out, "Enter." We entered. The guard saluted, then left us to the whims and charms of Lt. Esparza, a most handsome gent with a thin, bronzed face and neatly combed black hair. He was obviously of Hispanic rather than Mayan descent, as was usually, if not invariably, the case with those in positions of authority in that neck of the woods.
The lieutenant flashed us a welcoming smile, smoothed his dapper mustache with one well-manicured finger, gestured us to seats, saying, "Momento, por favor," jiggled his telephone receiver until he got a response from the operator, asked for the kitchens, and when he got through, said, "Twenty minutes," from all of which I deduced without too much difficulty that the prison chef had twenty minutes to prepare that day's special.
After he'd hung up, Benny, assuming a subservient manner, introduced me as a high official in the U.S. government and himself as my lowly translator and handed over our Dept. of the Interior calling cards—seeing which, the lieutenant arched his finely drawn eyebrows and asked how he could be of assistance.
I told him (with Benny translating, of course and as usual). What I told him was we would be eternally grateful if he could arrange for us to briefly visit one of his prisoners, a certain Sr. John Brown.
"Ah yes, Sr. Brown," said the lieutenant, heavily stressing the name. "Serving six years for smuggling, as I recall."
"So I believe," Benny said. "Tsk-tsk."
And what was our connection with Sr. Brown? Was one of us perhaps related to him?
I thought of saying yes, then I thought of the lieutenant's next line, "Prove it," which I couldn't, so I had to say no.
Then perhaps we had some legal interest in the prisoner. Perhaps we had been hired to represent him in some way?
I thought of saying yes, then I thought of the lieutenant's next line, "Prove it," so I said no.
Then perhaps we were connected with some international body like the Red Cross, whose representatives were under certain circumstances allowed access to prisoners?
I thought of saying yes, but I said no, mentally kicking myself for not having thought of it first.
"In that case," said the lieutenant, with a charming smile and spreading his hands apart ruefully, "much as I would like to help and much as I value the close and continuing friendship between our two peoples, regretfully, rules are rules. As government employees yourselves, you understand only too well. . . ."
"Only too well," I said, summoning up a smile not nearly as charming as his. "We had but a question or two to ask him, an unofficial survey, really. . . ."
"You might approach the commandante on his return," Lt. Esparza said with a notable lack of enthusiasm, "but I am afraid he is a man who is a slave to regulations even more so than I, especially when prisoners of some importance are involved."
Then Benny surprised me by asking me politely if I would mind leaving him alone with the lieutenant for a moment. I took the hint and, after saying gracias and good-bye to Lt. Joaquín Esparza, took my leave. A minute later Benny joined me back in the outer office and gave me the barest hint of a wink.
"What's up?" I whispered to him out of the corner of my big mouth.
"You'll see," he whispered back. After another minute the guard who had originally escorted us to the lieutenant's office came in from the reception area and once again bade us follow him.
We did, out back into the reception room, where he patted us down quickly but efficiently, opened up and closely examined the contents of a box of caramelos I'd bought from some kid and brought along just in case, and then bade us follow him again.
We followed him again, through two doors, each of which he unlocked and then carefully locked again behind us.
"Do you habla English, señor?" I asked him at one stage.
"Poco," he said, shaking his head. "My son is studying it at school, sometimes I help him." Just in case he spoke a bit more than poco, I thought I'd better pay attention to what I said to Benny and B
illy in his hearing; it has been my experience that when a lieutenant—indeed, any officer, in any army—wears nail polish, albeit transparent, he is capable of any trickery.
At the entrance to the cell block a guard in a tiny barred cubicle had a brief word with our guard, asked him something, got told something, handed over a set of keys, then pressed a master control behind him. The metal door in front of us slid back into a recess in the wall long enough for us to go through it, and then closed again behind us. A cheap transistor was playing somewhere, otherwise all was quiet. We followed our guide down a long, cement-floored corridor lined with cell doors that had closable Judas windows in them at eye level and floor level, then up a flight of concrete stairs, and back down a corridor identical to the first one, except the numbers crudely painted on the doors were different. Our feet seemed to make a lot of noise on the bare floor. As for the smell, well it wasn't so bad, just about twice as bad as what you get in a tannery or paper mill or slaughterhouse. Hang on, Billy.
Our escort stopped at the last door on the left, peeked through the slit, said, "Only ten minutes," then unlocked the door and swung it open, and there, asleep on his back on a sort of cement shelf that jutted out from the wall, was my blood brother Gray Wolf, or what was left of him.
While Benny and the guard watched from outside the cell, I went over to Billy, which took about two steps, and looked down at him in what light there was that streamed in from the small, high-set window. Luckily my face was hidden from the guard, and he couldn't see how shocked I was.
All Billy's hair was gone and there were scabby patches on his scalp. From the look of his sunken cheeks, he'd probably lost some teeth too.
His color was a whitish yellow. It looked like he was easily down under a hundred pounds. His head was pillowed on his bandaged hand; at least the bandage looked new and clean. He was dressed in oversized gray cotton pants and a gray cotton shirt. His dirty feet were bare; there was a pair of rubber sandals under his "bed." I kept my face hidden from the guard and gave Billy a gentle shake by one shoulder.
"Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown. Wake up, please."
He made a noise of complaint, rolled over toward me, and opened his eyes. When they focused on me and began to widen, I said quickly and loudly, "You don't know me of course, Mr. Brown. My name is Blackman, my associate over there by the door is Keith, we're from the U.S. Department of the Interior, and we have a few questions to put to you. It won't take a minute, I assure you, and then you can go back to sleep."
Billy struggled to an upright position and rubbed his face with the hand that still had all its fingers. For a moment he was too nonplussed to do anything but blink a few times, but then he nodded and managed to get out, "Sure, anything."
"In case our escort does have the command of languages he denied having, we will keep this short and businesslike." I officiously took out my memo pad and a pen.
"Health." I gave him a cursory glance; he gave me the beginnings of a small, a very small smile. "Satisfactory. Conditions of incarceration." I gave the four-foot by eight-foot shithole a cursory look, and a cursory look was all it took—all there was to see was the ledge, one blanket, on which Billy was now sitting, a plastic bucket with no lid, a spare shirt hung up on a splinter of wood wedged into a crack in the wall, the crack in the wall, and my old Parker High Panther teammate. "Satisfactory." I made another tick on the memo pad.
"Washing facilities?"
"Cold shower once a week, regular," he said in a sort of a husky croak.
"Exercise facilities?" He gave me another small tightening of the lips.
"Too much chlorine in the pool," he said, almost too low for me to hear.
"Cuisine?"
"Beans and rice," he said in his eerie croak. "On Sundays, rice and beans."
"Excellent," I said, ticking off another imaginary entry. "I've always found Mexican cooking delicious, myself. Oh. Here. Compliments of the U.S. government." I took out the candies, made an inquiring gesture to the guard, who nodded that it was all right, and gave them to Billy. He opened his mouth and pointed at where his teeth used to be. "Ah," I said, making another note. "Slight problem with cavities. Well, you can still suck, I hope." I handed over the caramels. Billy took them with his good hand, looked at the box, then looked away and started to cry.
"There, there, sir," I said, patting him comfortingly on the back. "Nothing lasts forever, you know. One of these fine days you will be a free man again. Just remember our old Boy Scout motto: Be mucho prepared."
Billy, his back still to me, nodded vigorously several times. There didn't seem to be anything else to say, so I gave his back one more pat and we left him there, retracing our footsteps all the way back to el parking and thanking everyone we met en route. Then Benny drove us back through the entrance tunnel, where he had to get out and open the trunk to show it wasn't crammed with escaping prisoners, and we were out of Febrero Segundo and on our way back to Mérida for a swim and a shower and a beer and a meal and the passing parade and sheets and TV and a lot of other items that were still but a dream or a memory to the occupant of Febrero Segundo's cell 199, the last one on the left on the first floor of A wing.
After a minute I asked Benny if he would mind stopping for a bit on the top of the same hill where we had pulled over on the way to the prison; he said he didn't mind at all. So he pulled over, and we both got out, took a few deep breaths, and looked back at the jail.
"I didn't even recognize him at first," I said. "I knew it was going to be him, but I thought for a minute they'd made a mistake."
"I know," said Benny.
"Benny, we have to do something—and fast."
"We will, we will," my friend said. "There is always a way."
"Yeah, sure," I said. "And while we're talking about ways, how the hell did you get us in to see him?"
Benny rubbed his thumb and fingers together in that universal gesture that means payola, baksheesh, bribery, la mordida—in other words, money changing hands.
"No!" I said.
"Sí," he said. "I'm not sure if the lieutenant and all those guards and clerks are in the regular army or a separate prison service, like in some countries, but there is no way they can be getting rich."
"That's for sure," I said. "Did you see where they went for lunch?"
"So I tactfully got you out of the way," Benny said, stretching mightily, "as such behavior might be considered unseemly coming from a man in your exalted position, slipped him a C-note, probably a month's salary, and suddenly all doors were opened."
"I'm glad someone in this country takes bribes," I said. "I was seriously beginning to worry."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I climbed back into the car, in the front seat beside Benny this time, and we continued on into town pretty much in silence. I don't know how Benjamin passed the time, perhaps trying to recall all the various aliases he'd used during his disgraceful existence or the location of all his bank accounts, but what V. (for Victor) Daniel was doing was thinking, and I'd seen enough during our visit to Febrero Segundo to provide me with reasons aplenty for thinking. Maybe the Two Stooges plus Bat Girl really could spring Billy relatively quickly and relatively bloodlessly—and in particular bloodlessly when it came to our own precious vital fluids.
Benny and I did converse enough on the drive back to agree on a couple of items, one being that there now seemed to be little purpose in involving the prison commandante if we didn't absolutely have to, since we already had a certain lady-killing lieutenant on the hook and on the take. We also agreed on what our (but mostly Benny's) next move should be, one that could only be done the following day, if at all. So that meant one more noche in old Mérida before we moved on to the move after our next move—call it our second move, if you like—heading south and trying to track down Big Jeff and his pal Cap'n Dan.
That eve the three of us ate at the French restaurant Benny had mentioned a few days back; and while I was daintily slurping down the first course, potage St. Germain (soup
made out of yesterday's leftover vegetables), I let Doris in on where we were going next day and told her as much as I knew about Big Jeff and his successful jailbreak. While I was finishing off the last of my sole amandine (fish with nuts), Benny fell into conversation with a loud-voiced, florid Canadian gent from Winnipeg who was seated with his little woman at the next table. He was attired in an eye-catching all-madras outfit; she in a plastic traveling trouser suit. It soon appeared that he had had a most successful day souvenir shopping and had managed with his bargaining skills to browbeat some hapless hammock vendor down from sixty bucks to forty-five bucks per hammock. Benny, being a kindly sort, congratulated him warmly and didn't bother mentioning that at his pal Jorge's the price to one and all would have been about ten bucks each. After supper Benny had a surprise for us—he took us to a steam bath he'd discovered on his last trip.
The baths were at the Colón, a stately old hotel right around the corner from the bistro, whither we proceeded smartly. In we went, and Benny requested a half an hour please and handed over some pesos and ordered some drinks and got handed in return three large and fluffy towels right out of a soap powder commercial, and we followed an ancient bellboy down a corridor to baño number two, which he unlocked for us. He led the way into a tiled room that had slatted wooden benches on two sides and then withdrew gracefully. We all turned our backs politely on one another, undressed, and then wrapped our anatomies in towels. When I turned around, I exclaimed, "Doris! All your hair's fallen off!"
"It was a wig, stupid," she said, rubbing one hand over her almost bald dome. "Francis, my stylist, dig, at Sassoon's, said I'd completely totaled my hair with all that shit I've been putting on it, so it had to come off."
"Francis said that, did he?" I said. "Hmm. But I love the Yul Brynner look, it's so you. It's true it might be considered a soupçon passé, but don't worry, it'll grow out in a year or two."
"That's more than I can say about yours," she said.
"Oh, come on, you two," said Benny. "Walk this way."