A sheaf of paper was shoved into Gearheardt’s hands. He quickly reviewed and initialed the lot. We continued through the room, down the hall and into Gearheardt’s conference room. Isabella met us at the door with more messages. He gently pushed her hand away.
“Girls, girls, let me get situated here. Jack and I have pancakes. Taking over the world will have to wait.” He smiled and put his arm around the lovely shoulders of Isabella and led her back to her desk. Then he joined me at the table where a young waitress was setting out our breakfast.
Gearheardt had three small pancakes arranged to look much like Mickey Mouse. My two round pancakes were separated by one long pancake that looked like nothing, or perhaps testicles and a phallus. It briefly reminded me of the Disney knockoff store in Hong Kong—inexplicably named Donald Dick. I realized I was getting paranoid about the differential treatment Gearheardt seemed to get, but it hardly seemed coincidental that Gearheardt got Mickey Mouse pancakes and I got Peter Prick pancakes.
“Gearheardt,” I began, “let’s get back to this operation. Am I still on for not assassinating the President of Mexico this afternoon? In fact, preventing his assassination?”
“Righto, Jack. Exactly what you’re on for. And then you’ve got to get your ass to Havana before we lose the momentum. When the Marines take Havana, you and Marta will be there to greet them, backed by an ISP Commando Brigade that will discourage the Marines from taking up permanent residence.” He finished his three pancakes and looked hungrily at my untouched plate. “Are you going to eat—whoa, never mind.”
“So the prostitutes are going to have to fight the Marines? Come on, Gearheardt, this is a dumber plan than bombing halts in Vietnam.”
“You forgot the negotiation part, Jack. Light up a cigarette and I’ll tell you the rest.”
I shook a cigarette from my pack before I caught on. “Bullshit, Gearheardt, light up your own damn cigarette.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Daisy, on the phone but squinting nastily at the pack of cigarettes I was holding. I toyed with the package for a moment, pushing it around the desk, before returning it to my pocket. I didn’t want Daisy to think I was afraid of her.
“Okay again, Jack. Here’s the bare bones. The International Sisterhood of Prostitutes and Gearheardt Ventures of the Flesh have a joint operation. We’re taking over Cuba. And—”
“Why Cuba?”
“Couldn’t think of any other country that the U.S. would help us overthrow.” Gearheardt made it sound obvious.
“When I put together the intelligence network, a brilliant idea I’ll have to admit, the girls wanted to know who they were spying for. When I explained that they were risking their lives for the Free World, they wanted to know what the fuck the Free World had ever done for them.”
“So they decided they wanted their own country.”
“Over the months, yes. We had a series of meetings among the biggest whores around the world. One in Malta last January, and another in New York. We have a big chapter there. Anyway, yes, they want their own country. You understand this is just the tip of the iceberg. If they get themselves really organized, I would imagine we’re talking continent.”
“How can you always make insanity sound so reasonable, Gearheardt?”
“It’s easier than you might think, Jack.”
“You’re probably right. But that’s the plan, such as it is. What is the operation? I think I’ve got it figured out, but you tell me.”
Gearheardt held his palm toward me as Isabella leaned into his ear, whispering rapid Spanish. When she straightened (thankfully lifting her 90% exposed breasts from my line of sight) Gearheardt looked at his watch and nodded up to her. “Thirty minutes,” he said.
“Jack, we need to wrap this up and get you over to the assassination scene. Got your gun?”
“Yes, but I’m not running out of here with a gun and no information. Give it to me.”
“So the whores decided to begin training a select few as warriors. Some were enrolled in an economics unit. Others … well you get the idea. And over the past six months, we’ve put the plan in place. The catalyst is the attempt by Cuba to assassinate the President of Mexico. You know that. What you don’t know is that Operation Double Bola is now underway across the world.” He turned in his chair and tapped the shoulder of the young woman manning the phone behind him. “Navaja, por favor?”
The girl smiled and took a small instrument from her purse that looked strangely frightening. Turned out, it was strangely frightening.
“They slip these over the nuts and they’re kind of like that Chinese finger trap, the harder you pull, the tighter they get. Look here, Jack,” he bent down toward the desk, arranging two pencils in guillotine-type fittings, “these little babies are ingenious. Two step pulls. First pull on this wire, snaps this against your nuts. I’ve heard it hurts like a bastard but usually only brings on screaming and vomiting. That’s to get a guy’s attention. But the next pull,” he yanked an almost invisible line in his hand and the pencils were snapped in two, “gets the nuts cropped at the base very cleanly. You’ll be singing Christmas carols like Alvin the Chipmunk the rest of your natural life. Assuming someone stops the bleeding. Pretty neat, huh?” He held them toward me but I declined to take them.
“We had them made in China. Japan had the first contract but tried to double the price. Claimed their original bid only covered one testicle. Damn, Jack, I don’t know how businessmen look themselves in the mirror in the morning.”
“How many of these things did you order?”
“Somewhere around two hundred thousand, Jack. To tell the truth, we couldn’t keep up with the demand.”
“Two hundred thousand?”
“Jack, do you realize how many hookers, prostitutes, whores and whatever you want to call them, there are in the world?”
I heard gunfire in the street outside. Gearheardt went on without seeming to notice.
“Probably in the neighborhood of a million girls and women, Jack. But that’s just the surface. Gearheardt Enterprises had a survey run before we actually ordered the de-nutting device. Pretty discouraging for the men. If the results were accurate even to the seventy-five percent level, there are over a billion and a half women in the world who would pay fifty dollars or more to have a de-nutting device like this. Shocking, no?”
“A de-nutter?” I was not processing information very quickly.
“Beat the potato peeler by a three to one margin. But that’s not the important thing. We aren’t running a manufacturing business. We’re just trying to get an idea of potential membership in the ISP. We found out that if we allowed associate memberships—where you actually weren’t employed as a hooker but had just been screwed over by a man—the potential membership was close to two billion. These are estimates of course. Just extrapolating from the survey samples. We tried to adjust for the cultural differences. The thing is, the support we anticipate getting for the new Cuba could be pretty darn strong.”
“Fifty dollars?” My mind was still coming to grips with the thought of two billion women wanting ball removers.
Gearheardt laughed. “Well, not exactly. Again, we tried to make cultural adjustments for various segments of the survey. For example in parts of Africa, the question allowed them to answer ‘everything I own’ instead of a dollar amount. We weren’t really doing a pricing model. We were just considering the demand and feasibility of the joint venture.” Gearheardt the marketing guru.
“Wait a minute, Gearheardt. Surveys, manufacturing, uh, de-nutters. Where did you get the money for all this? Are you making all of this up?”
Gearheardt laughed again, harder. “Jack, you haven’t been paying attention. The CIA paid for everything. Plus a bit from some other intelligence agencies.” He paused. “I have to tell you that on top of everything else, the good old CIA is the most generous of the spy organizations. Boy, those bastards at Mossad wouldn’t cough up a dime. The French were tighter than ticks too.”
�
��I thought you told me that the ISP was financing this Mexican operation.”
“They are. But it’s with the Agency’s own money. I sold them on the idea of the spy network in whorehouses and bordellos. Of course they’ve actually been running that trap for years, but it was never organized until I came along. But anyway, they gave us so much money that we were able to fund the ISP operations and still loan funds back to them.”
The gunfire in the street was now sporadic pops. Gearheardt motioned for me to stay seated while he took a quick look out the window. When he sat back down, he pursed his lips. “Where were we?”
“You were going to have some de-balling equipment made.”
“We did have some made. Remember? Two hundred thousand sets. And most of those are distributed in the cities where we think they can be used to our best advantage.” He sat back and pointed to the wall maps. “Look at the numbers now, Jack. A few hours away from your big contribution to our cause and the girls are performing tremendously.”
“How?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” He studied the map for a moment. “These aren’t accurate totals, Jack, but I would say that at the moment there are almost eight thousand bureaucrats, seventeen thousand military officers, and nearly a hundred thousand business leaders with their balls in the ISP/G Double Ball trap. Not quite what we hoped, but sufficient I would say.”
“How did they manage—?”
“The girls came up with their own plans. Some houses offered two girls for the price of one. So while one girl kept the customer busy, the other one attached the gizmo. Some places just had the girls offer to lick the guys balls, something no self respecting male John can pass up, and the girls attached the trap while the guy was in dreamland. Luckily most of the customers are stupid enough to think that a girl is grooving on licking around hairy chicken-skin orbs. They never suspect a thing.” Gearheardt gestured back to the lethal instrument resting on his desk. “Once attached, the girl calmly explains the situation, pulls the first string, waits until the yelling and puking stops, and then explains what will happen when the second string is pulled. They usually have the guy’s full attention by then.”
“And there are these … thousands of men around the world sitting in traps as we speak.”
“Evidently.” He flapped his wrist nonchalantly at the maps.
“And they are waiting for the word to …” I wasn’t sure I understood the timing of the next part.
Gearheardt grimaced. “Well, that’s the problem. You see when Sari in Delhi jumped the gun, some of the other houses followed her lead. We underestimated the desire to de-nut folks, and now we have a hell of a logistics problem on our hands.” He turned his chair and looked at the maps, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t think we can keep these guys hanging by the balls until the U.S. has time to kick Castro out of Cuba. So I’ve got about three hours to come up with another plan.”
Gearheardt rose and went to the coffee pot. He chatted easily with a young woman (dressed in red bikini panties and a lace bra, barely covered by a man’s shirt) who was refilling the sugar pot. As he sipped his brew, his hand drifted down the woman’s back and I saw his fingers creep under her waistband. He whispered to the woman, they both laughed, and he returned to where I was sitting.
“Gearheardt,” I said, “I truly don’t know whether you are a genius or an asshole.”
“Oh, I probably am, Jack.” He grinned.
“Weren’t you just feeling that girl’s butt while we are in the middle of a siege and trying to get prostitutes to take over the world?”
Gearheardt frowned and looked at his hand as if it had acted on its own. “Yes, I did.” He leaned across the desk toward me. “Jack, I swore to help these women. I didn’t swear not to fool around with them. There’s a difference.”
“I’m sure there is. It just seems like—”
“Jack, you know how much I love women. I’m more or less like that fat Saint guy, Augustine. I want to be cured of my lust, but not just yet while I’m having fun. You know, Augustine the Hippo.”
“Augustine of Hippo, you nitwit. Hippo was a city in North Africa about two thousand years ago.”
“Thanks, Jack. Sometimes I think Princeton didn’t demand enough of me.” His face grew thoughtful for a moment. “I’ll bet I’m still the only graduate that got his degree at gunpoint. I think I have some gaps in my education. But I don’t blame them.”
A burst of automatic weapon fire from the street silenced the room. After another long burst, the firing stopped. The room remained quiet for thirty seconds until a PRC-10 radio on one of the tables squawked. Daisy picked it up, spoke into it and a response in Spanish was given. She looked at Gearheardt.
“The street will be clear now, Señor Gearheardt.”
“Thank the girls for me, Daisy.” He turned to me. “Jack, we need to get you on your way. I’ve got a squad of ladies that will escort you to the square where the speech is to be given. You can trust them. They’ll hook you up with Marta and she’ll get you to Cuba.”
Gearheardt stuck out his hand. “See you in Havana, Jack.”
A red phone hanging on the wall behind Gearheardt’s desk rang. The sound broke through the high noise level in the room, louder and shriller. Gearheardt dropped my hand, held up one finger asking me to wait, and lifted the receiver to his ear.
“Gearheardt,” he said.
He listened for a moment, then began to move his lips and rock his head, mimicking whoever was on the other end.
“Yes, yes,” he finally said, “but I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Speekee English?”
He held his palm over the transmitter. “Hold on, Jack. I got some crazy Italian screaming about Crenshaw.” He listened for another moment.
“Calm down, ‘Guido’. I said I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
Gearheardt listened and then shrugged toward me, holding his index finger up again. Someone spoke.
“Yeah, it’s Gearheardt. Who is this?
Paul? Paul Anka? …
No, I was just pulling your chain. I recognize your voice, your Greatness. I mean your Holiness. So what’s up? …
Sure, I know Crenshaw. And I am working with him … … ”
Gearheardt grimaced at me. He rolled his eyes.
“Look, Paul. I can see where you’re heading with this. But that wasn’t our agreement and if you made some sort of side deal with Crenshaw, that’s not my problem … ”
But you already have a country …
Right, right. No beaches. Right. Yes, I’ve heard they can be assholes … Of course. Not all Italians, I understand …
Well, to tell the truth I assumed you talk to Him all the time. But did He say that you should actually do this deal or are you just reading something into His response? I can tell you that a number of the girls say they have also talked to Him and His response was pretty clear …
That’s not worthy of you, Paul. They’ve all had a bit of bad luck but some of them are very spiritual women …
Paul. Paul. Look, let’s cut to the chase. No deal. This country will belong to the women. You may set up shop there, but that’s up to the women. Just like any other government …
Yeah, well at least I don’t wear a white housecoat and beanie around all day …
Try it, big boy. There isn’t a cloud in the sky here …
And lay off the vino before you call next time.”
Gearheardt slammed the receiver back into its holder. The room around him was silent. All eyes, Mexican and Catholic, were on him.
“Paul DiMarzio,” he said. “An old pal from high school.” His grin was weak. But then I knew his real grin. The women went back to work.
“Let’s grab another room, Jack. I think we need to talk some more before you go running off to your assassination.”
We went down the hallway and found an open room. The window faced the alley and there was very little street noise. On one table beside the red velvet co
vered bed was a bowl of condoms. The table on the far side of the bed displayed a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary.
“Kind of an incongruous scene isn’t it, Jack?”
“You mean the statue of the Virgin Mary? Does seem rather—”
“The statue? All the girls have the statue. I mean the rubbers. The guys won’t use condoms and of course they’re against the rules in the church. A man thing I guess. But we have more pressing matters, Jack. I need your help.” He lay down on the bed and propped his head against the headboard. “Jack, how about opening that window. I am dying for a cigarette.”
The most amazing thing about Gearheardt, the trait I probably admired most, was his grace under pressure. If I understood all that he had told me, he had thousands of girls around the world holding twice that many testicles in miniature guillotines. He was masterminding a to-be-thwarted assassination of the President of Mexico, his bordello headquarters was under attack by any one of a number of groups he was trying to double cross and he had just told the Pope to go shinny up a rope. And there he was lighting a cigarette off of a votive candle and relaxing on a whore’s bed.
“Let me gather my wits here, Jack. Damn, this cigarette tastes good.” Gearheardt closed his eyes and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“For God’s Sakes, Gearheardt!” My grace under pressure still needed some work. I grabbed his arm and pulled him to a sitting position. “We need to get our asses in gear! Victor and the bad Cubans are going to be trying to shoot the President of Mexico in less than two hours. I may be the only hope of stopping them.”
The door burst open and a camouflaged Major Crenshaw injected himself into the conversation by aiming a Thompson sub-machine gun in the general direction of Gearheardt’s head. “Greetings, gentlemen,” he said. “First things, first. Jack, you are no longer an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. Obviously your pal here, Mr. Gearheardt, is off the list.” He kicked the door shut behind him.
Goodbye Mexico Page 26