“I don’t like the looks of this,” Porter whispered.
“Not to worry,” Pierre replied in his normal nasal voice. “These assholes ain’t nothin’.”
At the word “assholes,” a discontented murmur ran around the circle of machete-wielding men.
Pierre addressed the red-eyed individual who had admitted them: “Dónde está?”
“En tu trasero,” he answered, and the others chuckled with menacing rough glee.
“Come on.” Pierre led the way around the ring of domino-players, toward a dim building rising at the back of the long flagstone courtyard.
“What is this place?” Porter whispered. He pulled on Pierre’s sleeve to make him stop.
“This place?”
“Yes, this place!”
“This the Mason Lodge.”
“What?”
Porter looked back down the courtyard, where the men were passing a liquor bottle and laughing darkly at some private joke. He had imagined that the Masons gathered in more solemn ceremony. He wished he had brought the Derringer. What was the point of having a pistol if he never carried it?
“Why are they thwacking those machetes like that? Is that for some kind of initiation or—” He gulped. “—blood sacrifice?”
“They ain’t machetes,” Pierre said scornfully. “Ain’t you never seen a scimitar?”
“As a matter of fact, I have not. What are they doing with scimitars?”
“They symbolic, man. These folks is Masons, jest like me, bound to take their brothers in, no questions asked.”
“You’re a Mason….” The information resisted assimilation.
Pierre puffed up. “You lookin’ at the Installed Master.”
He pulled out the lump of keys on the leather thong around his neck and thumbed through them until he found an amulet the size of a postage stamp. “See, got the square and compass in sterlin’ silver.” He held it close to the lantern so that Porter could see it.
“But aren’t you a Catholic?”
“Pope got his opinion, I got mine.”
He dropped the lump of keys back inside his shirt and held the lantern aloft so that it was shining into Porter’s eyes.
“You called those men assholes—your fellow Masons.”
“Anybody can be a asshole,” Pierre said.
Porter blinked against the glare.
“Come on then.” Pierre slipped into a shadowed breezeway. Porter, blinded by the lantern light, caught up as Pierre was rapping on a door.
There was a sound from within, and Pierre opened the door enough to admit a human body and slipped inside. Porter pressed in after him.
Porter had thought that Room Five was bare bones, but the inner recess of the Masonic lodge gave the lie to this belief. There was a straw mattress on the floor covered with a rough brown blanket, a derelict rattan chair, a card table with a tin can for a candlestick, two smudged glasses, and a bottle of tequila. On the floor next to the mattress stood a calfskin suitcase and a massive black leather Gladstone bag. A raveled blanket had been tacked over the window. A trim man was peering around the edge of the makeshift curtain.
Pierre cleared his throat.
The man turned. He was wearing fuzzy slippers and a robe with velvet lapels, and he needed a shave.
Pierre swept his arm in an arc. “Allow me to present my Masonic brother and the pres’dent a this great republic.”
Lithe and light, the man tripped over and seized Porter’s hand between his two petal-soft palms. “Francisco Flores,” he said in perfect English. “You can call me Frankie. Or El Presidente.” He laughed lightly.
Normally, Porter would have been floored, but lately he had come to expect the unexpected. He managed to find his voice: “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Mr. President.”
Through skillful maneuvering, Porter managed to get hold of Francisco Flores’ right hand for a proper shake. “William Sydney Porter.”
Flores’ flesh went cold. The color drained from his face. He shook his hand free and sprang back, glaring at Porter. “You’re the one who’s been writing for the papers,” the president accused.
“That’s right.”
Flores turned a baleful countenance on Pierre, swearing at him in rapid Spanish, then switching to French for good measure, then to English in case the Cajun had missed anything. “What the hell, you dirty cuif! Christ on a cross, I do not need this kind of attention. You little bitch!”
Pierre stood as patient as a post, gazing at a corner of the ceiling. When the president had subsided into a sputtering low-burn, Pierre said in his most nasal voice, “You lookin’ for Isabel Whitaker, this the man to talk to.”
Flores’ expression changed as quickly as hell can scorch a feather. “You know where Isabel Whitaker is?”
Porter had no idea what was going on. He said: “I think I can locate her if I need to.”
Flores turned on Pierre and snarled, “Get out of here, you degenerate goat.”
“Don’t you want your hair cut now?” There was a clicking sound. Pierre held up his barber’s scissors.
“Idiot! Get out!”
Pierre slipped the scissors into his pocket. He glided off into the shadows. The door clicked shut behind him.
The president drew a deep breath and pressed his fingertips against his temples. “Please, Mr. Porter. Sit.” He gestured to the sagging rattan chair.
Porter sat and leaned over the card table to examine the bottle of tequila. Cuervo. He was not familiar with the brand, but he had a sudden hankering for it.
Flores obliged by pouring a couple of stiff shots into the dirty glasses.
Then he dropped onto the mattress and sat back on his heels, looking up like a poodle. “You must forgive my outburst,” he said. “I’m eager to avoid publicity of the kind you have been generating with your stories.”
“I’m not in the publicity business,” Porter told him. He lifted one leg over his knee and sipped the tequila, which was excellent—suave and tasting of the desert in springtime. It did not belong in this room; but it belonged with the man.
“You are becoming a real muckraker, my dear. Your brand of reporting can lead to significant harm. Look what happened to you Yanks with the Spanish War. Lies and more lies, bogus bombings, broken promises. William Randolph Hearst makes a fortune selling papers, and you inherit a couple of countries.… Anyway.” Flores made a dismissive gesture and sighed. “Such things are not my concern. What matters to me is Isabel Eames. I mean Whitaker. Do you know her work?”
The president launched into a lengthy, rapturous disquisition on the stage career, European and American, of Isabel Eames Whitaker. He spoke with the kind of lust for detail usually reserved for discussions of military history or thoroughbred horses. “September 8, 1896, at the Tivoli Opera-House, she sang Juliette. Of course, her famous role! The Chronicle recorded a mild evening—it was Tuesday—with light fog,” and so on, including curtain times and luminaries in attendance through the end of the calendar year and into the next before he took a breath.
“I will show you something.” Flores set his glass on the floor and leaned over and sprang the latch on the suitcase. From among the folded clothes, he pulled a long flat box that, when opened, filled the room with the sinus-clogging smell of cedar. As if removing a scroll from the Torah ark, he withdrew a piece of cloth. He laid it on the mattress. He took another cloth from the box and smoothed it tenderly. There must have been thirty or forty pieces, all embroidered by a skillful hand. Flores lifted the first cloth and offered it to Porter. “My Guinevere,” he whispered.
Porter held the corners between his thumbs and forefingers. It was a petit-point three-quarter profile of Isabel Eames Whitaker. It should have been absurd, a cartoon, a trifle. But it was not. The workmanship was superb. Somehow, the portrait captured the radianc
e and the slovenliness, the beauty and the filth, of the prima donna.
Porter handed the embroidery back to the president. “You did this?”
“These as well.” Isabel on stage, Isabel reclining in a garden, Isabel in a gondola floating on a Venetian canal. There was a portrait of Isabel standing on a pedestal, a golden halo highlighting her auburn hair. The president gazed at his handiwork. His eyes gleamed.
Porter said: “My late departed wife did embroidery to calm herself. It never looked like this.”
“But it soothed her soul,” the president sighed.
“Not really,” Porter said, remembering that Athol’s needlework was knotty and uneven.
Flores returned, one by one, the petit-point portraits to the cedar box and the box to the suitcase.
He reached over for the Gladstone bag and heaved it onto his lap. His hand dipped inside and plucked out a banknote. Porter had the impression there were stacks of cash inside the bag.
The president handed him a $100 gold certificate.
“I hope this isn’t a bribe,” Porter said, without much conviction. He folded the bill and tucked it into his waistcoat. “I write what I write. Although,” he admitted, “I’d have to churn out a lot of words for this kind of scratch.”
“I don’t want you to write, Mr. Porter. In fact, I would prefer never to read anything by you again. The one hundred dollars is a gratuity in advance for putting me touch with Isabel Eames. Whitaker.”
“Oh.”
Tears trembled on the president’s long eyelashes. “She never responds to my letters.”
“You’re friends?”
“At a distance,” Flores said in a wistful voice. “But I plan to take her with me when I leave for Europe. She will be happier in Paris. I am certain. So will I.”
“You’re absconding?”
“Yes. I don’t want to die.”
“You’ll live the life of a millionaire, I suppose.”
Flores’ eyes flicked toward the bag in his lap. He smiled a small smile. “I’ll live like a king,” he said and retrieved his glass from the floor beside the mattress. “Shall we have another drink?”
They had several.
When Porter groped back into the courtyard, a loose nail in his boot heel scraping on the flagstones, he found the Masons still playing dominoes. Several rushlights had burned into smoldering puddles on the tabletop, and two of the men slumped stuporously on their barrels. The others glowered at him.
Outside the circle, on the edge of the penumbra of light, watching the slamming of the bones, intent yet somehow dispirited, stood Pierre. Porter knew himself to be pretty liquored up, but he thought he detected sadness on the Cajun’s boiled-red face. Loneliness.
“No doubt he’s absconded,” Porter said, fooling with his mandolin. There was a lighted lantern at his feet. With Porter’s earlier absence, the quartet had had to postpone the singalong for a few hours. Geddie, Jennings, and Grieg had made use of the time by drinking.
“That’s what my man Englebart tells me,” the consul said. He puffed on his cigar.
The sound of Sybil running back and forth on a branch broke the stillness of the night. Boxcar doors slammed in the distance. “Not a soul has seen him in the halls of power for four or five days. The national bank director is keeping mum, but we can assume that Flores has, indeed, absconded—”
“Decamped is a better word,” stuck in the quarantine doctor and released a spattering stream of tobacco juice.
“‘Decamped’ sounds rather dry.”
“As unbuttered toast,” agreed the doctor. “But it’s accurate.”
“Very well. We can assume that he’s decamped, probably with a good share of the national boodle. I’d put the figure north of two million dollars.”
Jennings whistled.
“What form would that take?” Porter said casually. “The boodle, I mean. Bullion? Silver coin?”
“That would be unallocated 1882- and 1888-series United States gold certificates. Safest money in the world, excepting the British pound. Are you reporting, Bill?”
“I’m taking the pulse of the situation. Getting the facts in order.”
Al Jennings clucked. The mention of U.S. gold certificates had piqued his interest.
“The facts?” the consul said. “Everybody’s got some of them nowadays.”
“For instance,” Porter went on, “it is a fact that there is a U.S. naval cruiser anchored beyond the reef. Why?”
“I’m not prepared to answer that question.”
“Okay, how about this one: If you were the chief executive of this banana republic and you wanted to escape with your life and two million dollars, how would you go about it?”
While the consul puffed thoughtfully on his cigar, Porter ran through a couple of scales on the mandolin. There was a clatter in the ficus tree, and Sybil plunged to the ground. The men jumped.
“Goddammit, Buck, why does she do that?” Dr. Grieg growled.
The consul leaned over and scooped up the unconscious monkey. “It’s not nearly so frequent,” Geddie said. He fished the vial of smelling salts from his jacket and laid Sybil across his lap to revive her.
“I’ll work up a new formula,” Porter said. “She must have blood-pressure trouble.”
Sybil stirred on the consul’s lap and made a cheeping noise.
Geddie returned to Porter’s question: “Overland takes too long and there are too many choke-points along the road—although calling it a road insults the engineering genius of civilizations past and present. In any case, Flores would have to cross the frontier into countries that have no reason to love him and plenty of reasons to relieve him of his banknotes. That leaves the sea route. Solitas, Alazán, and here. Of the three, Coralio is the shortest travel route from the capital, making it attractive if time is of the essence, which it surely is when you’re carrying the national bank and your cousin’s preparing to run your ass into the sand. Francisco’s mistake was allowing Terencio to escape from Yoro Prison. Off the record—he should have had him shot.”
While the consul was talking, Porter had been translating him into his own prose, writing by feel, his pencil skimming across the pages of the steno pad:
The trail from the capital was a weary road to travel, a jiggity-joggety journey. It climbed appalling mountains, wound like a rotten string about the brows of breathless precipices, plunged through chilling streams, and wriggled like a snake through sunless forests teeming with menacing insect and animal life.
He did not know if this description was accurate, but it seemed plausible.
Geddie continued: “Like most tinpots, Francisco Flores lacks natural allies. He’s in power because he’s useful to his government’s ministers and to the United States. Heck, he gets ninety percent of the vote, which tells you how much anybody really cares. To effect an escape, he would need help hiding. He could buy help, perhaps, but when the money starts getting paid around, strong-arm robbery becomes a real threat. As for the populace—well, they’re happy when he taxes foreign businesses, especially Vesuvius, to pay for partially functioning sewers, but I doubt they would feel happy if he showed up asking for help to blow the country.”
“That’s insightful and succinct,” Porter said, flipping the page on his steno pad.
“I’ve had time to consider the matter,” Geddie said.
“I s’pose the commandante will send out patrols,” Jennings mused.
“Already has. I spoke with him this morning over baleadas. By the way, Bill, you’re a miracle worker. Thanks to that tonic, I’ve resumed my normal diet. No offense, Herman, but your syrup isn’t worth shit.”
“None taken,” Dr. Grieg murmured. “Medicine’s a hit or miss proposition.”
The consul resumed: “The commandante expects Flores to surface in the next day or two.”
“I wondered why those ragtags were everywhere,” Jennings said. “And who the hell is that clown on the single-wheeled cycle?”
“A circus act,” Dr. Grieg said.
“So, Bill, have I supplied the answers you were looking for?” Geddie said.
“A thousand thanks.”
“I look forward to seeing the story in the papers,” said the consul. “I do. —On an unrelated matter, you may have noticed that Al is in tip-top spirits this evening. He received his official pardon. He’s going home.”
“Direct from Teddy Roosevelt himself,” Jennings declared. “A full pardon, including the unfortunate maiming of the federal employee. Praise the Lord.”
“Congratulations,” Porter said. “You deserve it, I guess.”
“I plan to tack it up on the wall of my law office in Oklahoma. They’re fixing for statehood in the next couple of years, and I aim to help the citizens make the legal transition. With the Curtis Act’s seizing the tribal lands for settlement, there’s bound to be a lot of property disputes. It’s routine work, but it suits me fine. Robbing trains is too uncertain. Some days come up roses, but too many come up dust.”
“Routine work gives a man some relief,” Geddie said. “Maybe I’ll join you one of these days. What about you, Herman?”
The quarantine doctor spat noisily. “Are we going to sit here all night discussing the unknowable future or are we going to sing?”
The consul struck an E-chord on his guitar. Porter added a flourish on his mandolin. Al Jennings cleared his throat, ee-ee-eeee.
This time they nailed “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” in spooky four-part harmony.
The warm smell of hay and horses filled the air as Porter passed down the length of the livery stable, through the shafts of light that pierced the rusted metal roof. The horses and mules shifted in their stalls and communicated softly with one another. When he reached the back of the stable, he knocked on a plank door, silver with age. After a moment the door jerked back to reveal Pierre, looking winded, as though he had just sprinted through the back gate. He was dressed in blue denim and a white shirt of the kind worn by the dockworkers. His hair was slicked back with some shiny substance Porter did not care to know about.
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