“H.L. Stroud of the Picayune. He likes ice cream. Working for me, he gets all he can eat.”
“If you expected me to decline, why did you have your man McCoy make me an offer?”
“I’ve made a fortune converting wasteland to production and profit. If you had accepted, you might have proved a wise investment. I could have turned your trivial thoughts into something useful.”
“You make me feel unbathed,” Porter said. “I don’t suppose you’ll shoot me in public.”
“Don’t think I wouldn’t,” Whitaker replied. “But I don’t happen to have my pistol with me. As you said, I’ve been occupied. But I’ll get to it in the next day or two, don’t you worry. Now why don’t you get the hell out of this store.”
Porter lifted his Stetson. “Until then,” he said and stepped around the banana king. Whitaker was not going to move an inch.
It was easy to hop on the rain barrel and slip the catch on the wooden shutter. As he climbed through the back window of Hilario’s dry goods store, Porter thought: a person has infinite futures but only one past. His own single past, he reflected, tumbling to the floor of the storeroom in a cloud of dust, had led him to this degraded position, and there was nothing he could do about that. The possible futures that ramified from this moment looked to him entirely justifiable and mostly desirable, with a couple of exceptions, including a violent end to his life.
He stood up, brushed himself off, and pulled aside the curtain of old coffee sacks that hung in the doorway of the storeroom. For the next hour, he combed the aisles, then the area behind the counter, then the back room; but he did not find a black leather Gladstone bag stuffed full of money.
He climbed back out of the window and sat on the rain barrel and forced himself to think it through. Pierre may or may not have known what was in the bag when he made off with it after Flores was killed, but he certainly knew what was in it by now. He also knew that he, Porter, knew that he, Pierre, was the person who most likely had the money. The Cajun was not an imbecile, despite everything. Someone was bound to come looking for the national treasury, so he had a good reason for stashing the bag somewhere other than the store, the barbershop, the livery stable, or any other place he owned. As far as Porter could tell, Pierre had no family and no friends, not even the domino-players at the Masonic lodge. There was a big jungle out there; he might have a hidey-hole; but if he were in Pierre’s position, Porter would not feel secure stashing that much money out of immediate reach.
After a while he hopped off the rain barrel and, since he could not think of anything else to do, went to find a drink of guaro.
No one at the front desk of the hotel. He stuck his head around the corner. Nothing in the bar but furniture and the stench of stale tobacco. He moved toward the kitchen. Through the open door, he could see Pierre at the stove, slicing a gnarled yellow root into a boiling cauldron. He was whistling “Beautiful Dreamer.” The counters and floor were strewn with green feathers, and several plucked birds, wrinkled and pimpled, hung from a clothesline over the sink. Several more were soaking in a tub of vinegar. The smell burned his nostrils.
Cornelia Anderson must have rehired Pierre to do the cooking.
And in a flash, Porter knew exactly where he would find the Gladstone bag full of money.
Dr. Grieg was at home to visitors, although lately no one came knocking on the door of Room Three. Since most of his customers had taken the cure in the church basement, his income had been reduced to his small governmental salary, plus bribes from the first mates who had infectious cases on board. First mates never stuck around for a chat.
The doctor had spent the afternoon restitching some of the federal soldiers who had come out of the jungle with infected wounds. Now he was tired. He sat in bed, dozing, a rivulet of tobacco juice running from the corner of his mouth and dripping from his chin.
A rap at the door. “Doc?”
Dr. Grieg jerked upright and opened his eyes. “Come in, Bill.”
Porter came in and closed the door. The doctor shook his head to clear the cobwebs.
“I was just thinking that since Al Jennings left, our singalongs are defunct,” Dr. Grieg said irrelevantly.
“We could still sing three-part,” Porter offered, helping himself to the chair by the bed. “Come by the consulate tonight.”
Dr. Grieg thought it over. “No,” he said. “It would be sad and incomplete.”
“All right. When does the next passenger ship arrive?”
Dr. Grieg racked his memory. “Hand me my book.”
Porter retrieved a worn composition book from the table. Dr. Grieg hooked his steel-rimmed spectacles over his ears and paged through it. At last he said:
“Pantagruel, bound for New York from Rio by way of Cartagena arrives tonight, sails at dawn. Charter cruiser, but she calls for the mail and sets out limited cargo from South America. Seventy-six hundred tons, two-hundred forty passengers.” He closed the composition book and looked at Porter. “Usually everyone on board is deathly ill. Fevers and parasites and afflictions science has never heard of. So much tuberculosis the ship might as well be a floating sanatorium. I really shouldn’t allow her to go on. Ah, well. Rich people. She ought to be good for thirty-five dollars.”
“Will you let us ride out with you?”
“Us?” Dr. Grieg cocked an eyebrow and spat past Porter’s leg into his decorative Hong Kong urn.
“Yes. Us.”
“Skipping the country, eh? One step ahead of Walter Whitaker?”
“Something like that.”
The doctor spat again—sadly, Porter thought. “I’m sorry to see you go, Bill. It’s no fun singing duets with Buck Geddie and his guitar.”
“Do you want your gun back?”
Dr. Grieg shook his head. “You’d better keep it until you get out of range,” he said.
Porter hovered around the top of the staircase for over an hour until he saw Pierre leave the kitchen and shamble across the bar and push through the front door of the hotel. He slipped down the stairs and into the kitchen. The air was steamy and stank of parrot stew.
It took him less than a minute to find the bag. He pulled it from the top shelf of the cupboard, feeling the weight, and brought it to the counter. He was drenched in nervous sweat.
Pierre was smart; Porter credited him with that. But his return to the hotel kitchen was too perfectly timed. The Cajun had wanted a hiding place on someone else’s property, so he chose the hotel kitchen.
Porter emptied the bag on the counter. Jesus Christ. He was afraid he might go blind from the sheer resplendence of the cash. $20, $50, $100, $1000, and $5000 notes. He could scarcely believe that it existed.
As he replaced the bundles of currency, he totaled up, with shaking hand, the value on his steno pad: $2,120,000. His heart was pounding like a sledgehammer as he snapped the bag closed. He stood on his toes and slid the bag onto the top shelf of the cupboard.
If he took the money now, he was afraid that Pierre with his thong of keys would be unlocking every door in town to recover it. He reasoned that Pierre knew that he knew that Pierre had taken the loot when Francisco Flores was shot dead, and so he would come to his room first if the money went missing. Although the men with the donkey cart had carried off the weapons from the shelves at Hilario’s, Porter did not want to test Pierre’s capacity for violence, especially if he had to match the single-shot Derringer against one of the Belgian shotguns. It was better to leave the bag where it was until nightfall. If Pierre was at the stove when it was time to leave, Porter could take him by surprise with the Derringer and leave him tied up in a closet.
Isabel sat on the edge of the Moroccan fountain in the garden of the Whitaker estate without any clothes on, her feet dangling in the water, eating a
sardine sandwich with horseradish. She had made it herself, since the cook had fled. In fact, everyone had fled. The security men had gone to protect the plantations, and the household staff, along with the groundskeepers and stable boy, had taken the opportunity to—she did not know what they were doing, but they had vanished. Walter and his man McCoy were mopping up after the invasion. Monroe was chasing the capybara across the manicured grass. She was feeling blue, and a little chilly. Clouds had begun to gather. The day before, a mottled man who reminded her of a puppet had come to the house and, with Walter’s permission, taken all her recordings. Now she had nothing to listen to but howler monkeys and jungle birds.
Inside the house, the telephone began to ring. It kept on and on, trilling like a metallic bird, until Isabel remembered that Elinora was not there to answer it. There was a one-in-three chance that the caller was Cornelia Anderson, so after a moment, Isabel swung her feet out of the fountain, tossed the remainder of her sandwich into the water, and headed toward the house, a single ray of sunshine prying through the clouds and illuminating her naked backside as she stepped across the spongy green turf.
“Darling! Are you crazy? If Walter finds out you’re calling, he’ll pull your guts out through your ass.”
“Is he there?”
“No.”
“McCoy?”
“I don’t think so. Where are you calling from?”
“The hotel.”
“Where’s Connie?”
“Upstairs, I think. Is there anyone else we should worry about?”
“I’m sure there is.”
“Listen, Isabel, I have something that belonged to Francisco Flores. Something valuable.”
“Wonderful!”
“Are you upset?”
“About what?”
“Flores. His dying. Are you upset?”
“Yes, terribly.”
“I have the cash. We’re rolling in clover.”
“I’ll come toute de suite.”
“You can’t bring anything.”
“Oh, balls!”
“You can’t attract attention, Isabel. Wait until dark, then ride down to the consulate and pay a social call on Buck Geddie. I’ll meet you there. We’re leaving on the Pantagruel, first class.”
“Outstanding!”
“I have to go. I smell rain.”
For five minutes the rain fell so hard that anyone caught outside could not move a step and just stood and took a lashing. Then it cut off and the sun came out, hot as a branding iron, to finish torturing the inhabitants of Coralio.
Butch Higbee had been caught between the hotel and the cuartel. His clothes were steaming and his boots were full of rainwater.
Elliot Evans, loosed from his bonds, lay on the floor amid shards of broken records. The gramophone was silent. Evans’s eyes stared wildly into a vacuum. He was not wearing his boots, but in any case it did not look as if he could walk. He drooled and gargled: “Awrrrk momomonah.”
“How long’s he been like this?”
“Hour, I’d venture.”
“Dammit, Vaught, why didn’t you come get me?”
“Excuse me,” Vaught said petulantly. “When a man’s visitin’ the hotel, I don’t imagine he wantsa be interrupted.”
“Don’t imagine me, ya dumb hillbilly,” Higbee said and wished he had not. He did not like the way Vaught was handling his knife. “Where’s Hannity?”
“Hannity?”
“Jesus Christ. Has he been spellin’ you here or not?”
“Not,” said Vaught. “He got some kinder skeeter-bite sickness. As for this one, he’s liable to puke up his guts.”
Evans’s mouth moved around like an unhinged gate. “Awrrrrrk. Shabba shabomah.”
“He ain’t said nothin’ that sounds like a combination?” Higbee said.
“He ain’t said nothin’ that sounds human.”
Higbee looked down at the customs agent, his exasperation swelling like a vinegar-soaked sponge. “Goddammit!” he roared. “We gotta find some dynamite!”
“Now you’re talkin’!” said Vaught and began springing around the room like a wind-up toy, tossing his flashing knife from hand to hand.
Retrieving the mangled Pinkerton operative was a soggy job. Whitaker, McCoy, and Pierre had sheltered under the mahogany trees while the rain pounded the road and left the dead man soaking in a mire of mud, blood, and guts. Getting him wrapped in blankets and into the donkey cart left McCoy and Pierre covered with gore. Whitaker led the way back to town in his gig. McCoy drove the donkey cart and Pierre sat in the back with the corpse, which began to reek the moment the sun came blazing out.
When they had iced the Pinkerton in the depths of the fruiter Norma Zent, Whitaker informed McCoy that was staying aboard. He was going to New Orleans with the body and was to make sure that Mr. John Foot got dumped in a bayou where someone would discover him before the alligators gobbled him up. It was imperative that Foot died on American soil.
McCoy was a trusted employee, Whitaker reminded him. He had kept things running in Coralio while the expedition was being put together in New Orleans. Good job destroying Mr. William Porter’s printing press. When McCoy protested that he had had no hand in the firebombing, Whitaker nodded curtly and told him to expect a year-end bonus that reflected his, Whitaker’s, gratitude for his, McCoy’s, loyalty. McCoy said he wouldn’t mind taking a few weeks to visit his wife and children instead.… They were in Boston.… Doing very well, thank you.… Perhaps he could take a few days…? Maybe they could travel to New Orleans to meet him.… He was looking forward to the bonus.
By the way, could he get an advance to buy some clothes when he got to New Orleans? His were crusty with the Pinkerton operative’s innards.
“You,” Whitaker said to Pierre. “Give him some money.”
“Ain’t got no cash on me,” Pierre said.
“Yes, you do,” snapped Whitaker. “Pay it out and row me ashore.”
It was time to take care of unfinished business. Whitaker rolled along in the gig, admiring Henry’s fine rump, up the hill, through dripping trees. His clothes were damp from the jungle, and he needed to change his shoes. While they were rowing back from the Norma Zent, Pierre had intimated, in his odious and underhanded way, that Bill Porter, by a freakish stroke of fortune, had come into possession of the national treasury. Whitaker was relishing the thought of seizing the money and then shooting the scoundrel dead. He could claim that Porter was resisting his attempts to restore the money to the new government. The plan was not so pure as putting a bullet in Porter’s head because he had promised he would, but it had the virtue of ensuring the solvency of Terencio Flores’ administration, getting the Manhattan Commerce Bank off his back, and providing some kind of defense-of-the-nation claim should Buck Geddie decide to make an issue of American-on-American extraterritorial violence.
With a sentimental heart, Porter packed his Underwood Five typewriter, along with most of his clothing, in the steamer trunk for storage. He had told Cornelia Anderson when he met her that he intended to get paid for his work, and he had worked hard for what little money had come his way, writing up stories as they unfolded around him. Not in his wildest dreams had he expected the wealth of Midas to tumble into his lap. He had not done much of anything to deserve a Gladstone bag full of cash. The whole affair was a gigantic stroke of luck, which made it doubly satisfying. Porter caressed the Underwood’s hard cool black-enamelled case with his fingertips. Now that he was rich, he wondered if he would ever again feel the urge to tap the keys.
“What in blazes are you doing?”
Isabel looked up to find her husband looming over her. “Taking a bath with Monroe.”
At the sound of his na
me, the Airedale scrambled out of the water and shook himself vigorously, spraying the room. He leaped for Walter Whitaker, who cursed and jumped back, hitting his funny bone on the doorjamb and cursing some more. “Get off me, you brute!”
“We were having fun,” Isabel pouted. “Come back here, Monroe!”
Monroe panted across the tiles and leaped back into the bathtub, sloshing water over the floor. He splashed around like a kid on Christmas morning. He climbed up and put his paws on Isabel’s shoulders and collapsed.
“I ought to shoot that perverted dog,” Whitaker shouted. “I’m getting my gun.”
He stormed off.
She could hear him banging through cabinets and drawers in the back gallery.
Porter had helped himself to one of the remaining bottles of guaro and was sitting in the bar by himself, contemplating a golden future, when a cold rough hand fell on the back of his neck, and he heard a vaguely familiar, cold rough voice: “You black-hearted thievin’ sonuvabitch.”
Having been stirred to a froth of rage and frustration over the failure to obtain the combination to the custom-house safe, Butch Higbee had decided—if a man stirred to a froth of rage and frustration can be said to make rational choices—that it was time to settle William Sydney Porter’s hash.
Porter stood up slowly, arms out, palms up, and turned around.
“You remember me?” Higbee snarled.
“Mr. Higdon, isn’t it? Cook’s Saloon?”
“Higbee.” The muscles in his jaw twitched like a kicking rabbit. His rain-soaked clothes hung heavy on his body. He held a Luger pistol to Porter’s ribs.
Porter glanced down at the gun and tried not to breathe.
“Sorry, Higbee,” he said. “I truly am. That incident was nothing personal, just a last blowout before skipping. I couldn’t help it. It was a compulsion. Spin the wheel of fate, pray for the kiss of Lady Luck. Cast my future on the winds of fortune. You understand.”
“Okay, smart mouth,” Higbee said, producing a pack of playing cards with his free hand. “Let’s take a ride on the old wheel of fate. We’ll cut for it.”
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