The Spy's Little Zonbi

by Cole Alpaugh

  “You see that?” His words echoed, were carried back by the stone walls and the water below. “Look!”

  It was a hawk, or some other large bird of prey, making a fast, banked turn around the perimeter of the water’s edge, maybe seventy feet off the surface. With a slight angling of its wings, it gained altitude and headed out over the middle of the water, then dropped into a dive bomb at an incredible rate, reaching its talons out at the last instant to pluck a small, shiny fish from just below the surface. It beat its wing against the warm air and rose up and out of sight of the manmade cavern.

  And then it was Stoney’s turn to soar. Chase watched as he pushed off the ledge with a mighty howl, arching his back like a skydiver, arms reaching forward. He fell silent and fast, a blurry swoosh just a few feet in front of Chase, before slamming into the surface of the water fists and head first. Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever before Stoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.

  Stoney drove Chase to the airport two days later. Right up to the international terminal, but Stoney pretended not to notice. Again there was no talk and no music, just the sound of the wind on the highway, then the roar of big engines when they arrived.

  “I’m sorry,” Chase tried. He couldn’t see past Stoney’s mirror lenses.

  Chase grabbed his backpack and new camera bag from the back seat. Stoney hadn’t moved from behind the wheel, the Mustang idling at the loading zone curb. A cop was strolling up to keep people moving along and Chase didn’t want Stoney hassled for all the empties visible with the top down.

  “The pink slip is in the glove compartment. I signed it over.”

  “Christmas present?” It was Stoney’s first words.

  “Take care of it.”

  Stoney let go of the steering wheel and draped his right arm over the seat to look at Chase. “I’m the one who jumps, not you.”

  “Maybe it’s my turn.”

  The cop was standing next to Chase and seemed interested in the collection of bottles and cans strewn across the back seat and the piled on the floorboards.

  “Yeah, but you ain’t got my style.” Stoney revved the engine and popped the clutch. The tires spun and smoked as the startled cop jumped back and lost his balance, nearly falling on his ass. Chase held his ground because he knew Stoney and was in awe of how he kept the powerful old car under control, probably hitting eighty miles an hour by the time he reached the interstate.

  Chapter 9

  In the airplane window seat Chase was feeling like a little kid, nose pressed to the acrylic surface, circles of moisture appearing and disappearing. They banked hard right on approach and he searched every inch of the exotic view. The green hills spreading out below were hazy with smoke from dozens of what seemed to be small fires. The towns, built from dirt and stone instead of wood and steel, were earth colored. And Chase was here to help kill their president.

  The tires touched down with a screech and the stewardess reminded him three times to stay seated until they’d reached the terminal and come to a complete stop. With just his camera bag, one backpack, and a suit bag containing a rented tuxedo, Chase zipped through the special line at customs reserved for journalists.

  He checked into the Hotel Intercontinental and left his gear in the room. The concierge confirmed the address of the Palacio Nacional and promised a number of taxis would be waiting outside the hotel tomorrow night. Everything was falling into place, but he couldn’t be boxed in. His adrenaline was pumping and he needed to find the pool, maybe take a long walk. He checked his watch every ten minutes even though the formal state dinner was twenty-six hours away.

  A bite to eat then a second swim before collapsing into the queen-sized bed, where he just stared at the ceiling. Chase checked his watch a dozen more times before falling into the usual dream about the bloody day on the soccer field. In the dark he groped for a drink of water, the thick crystal glass shaking in his hand.

  The envelope had come to his dorm room, seeming to appear from nowhere like any good spy message should. It made it real for the first time. Inside was a passport, visa, plane tickets, and instructions detailing how he was to aid in a presidential assassination during the formal dinner.

  Chase went back to bed as the sun began to rise. He slept with it bright in his face until a little past noon, when the maid knocked. He had two bites of a room service sandwich, then went down to swim laps. Kids sat along the edge, feet kicking the chlorinated water as he lumbered past. Mothers in one-pieces with gold jewelry and full makeup were seated at round tables sipping fruit-filled drinks. Chase looked at his watch then tried knocking the water from his ears until realizing they weren’t clogged. Something other than the pool was making his head feel underwater. He did two more laps and grabbed his towel.

  Chase dressed an hour before cocktails were to be served. His pants were an inch too long and the shoulders were too tight. It didn’t matter. James Bond he was not. His hair was too long and he’d lost his soccer-honed muscle tone. He pulled the press pass over his head and checked the bag of brand new Nikon gear, which had also magically appeared in his dorm. The same cameras the big city shooters used, but these didn’t have nicks from stumbling and falling over fire hoses. No worn metal edges from throwing two camera bodies over the same shoulder to run toward a paramedic performing CPR. He splashed cold water on his face and wondered if he would feel different after taking part in a murder. He looked at his wet face, the face of a soon-to-be assassin. Would he be racked with guilt? Would he be so overcome he’d need to confess his crime?

  “I can kill someone without getting all crazy,” he told the mirror. He wasn’t confident.

  The Palacio Nacional was an impressive structure that drove his sense of apprehension even deeper. The complex could have been lifted right up out of Washington, D.C., and planted here among the earthquake-condemned cathedrals and abandoned office buildings. Sixteen massive columns held up the front of the square structure, lights reflecting on the low clouds from what was probably a central courtyard. Dozens of bats soared and swooped, dancing for food. Silent beggars lined the street in front, their reaching hands waiving like a cluster of sea anemones. Chase paid the driver in blue and red money and followed an elegant couple through a wrought-iron gate and into the arched entryway. After a quick security search Chase was directed down a wide marble hallway toward the dinner hall.

  President Daniel Ortega had been all over the news in recent weeks, his army mired in an ongoing war against the U.S. funded Contras in the north. Most media accounts held that Ronald Reagan wanted military bases built within the strategically located Central American country to keep an eye on Cuba. And the U.S. President had been accused by many political pundits of employing the CIA in an assassination campaign.

  Ortega was fresh off a trip to New York. He’d stood in front of the U.N. General Assembly and given a rambling, personal account of his twin brother’s death at the hands of the CIA. He claimed to have proof that the American spy agency had recruited a prostitute because of her uncanny resemblance to a much younger version of his wife, Nicaragua’s First Lady. The prostitute had been purposely infected with syphilis and put in place at an exclusive brothel a CIA informant claimed Ortega frequented on a weekly basis.

  The plan went off perfectly, except for the fact that it was Ortega’s brother with the taste for whores and expensive Champagne. And it wasn’t even the syphilis he’d contracted from the hooker that had killed him. It had been the man’s wife, the president’s sister-in-law, who had caused the untimely death when she’d hacked off her sleeping husband’s afflicted member with a steak knife.

  The president’s brother had bled to death in his own coffee fields trying to chase her down and recover his penis. But it had been easy to outrun a man with such recently inflicted damage. The ultimate revenge had been clenched tightly in her right fist. Mrs. Ortega danced into the night, screaming and laughing, sometimes pausing t
o talk to the penis in a mocking tone.

  “Look at me!” she commanded the penis in Spanish, holding it firmly in front of her as if admonishing a naughty puppy who’d soiled the carpet. “You were bad, very bad. Bad, bad penis!”

  Mrs. Ortega then held it high over her head, making the sounds of a revving engine. According to the peasant workers’ statements to investigators, she had eventually skipped off into the darkness like a child pretending to fly a toy airplane. Ortega’s speech writers had a field day when preparing El Presidente for his pleas in front of the U.N. for help defending against America.

  The dinner at the Palacio Nacional was a morale booster for the upper crust, the industry leaders and spiritual advisors of the masses. Journalists were invited and encouraged to spread the word.

  The sound of a single violin mingled with the polite chatter as Chase approached the banquet hall. An armed guard nodded at the open double doors and Chase was led to his seat by a waitress. He nudged his camera bag under his chair and surveyed the vast room. There were maybe a dozen guards and an army of servants in crisp black and white, wearing linen gloves.

  “The main course will be corvine from the Tipi Tapa River,” the waitress serving Chase’s section announced in English. The sixty people surrounding the long table were assigned by occupation. Chase recognized News Core commentator Hugh McManny and ABC’s Geraldo Lopez. Two women on either side of Lopez were introduced as local television news anchors. The journalists were seated mid-table, perhaps to soak in the night’s positive energy despite the ongoing guerilla war waged by Reagan’s rag tag Contras.

  The first course was served ninety minutes before Chase’s sharpshooter would be in place. He surreptitiously checked his watch and picked at his salad. There were eleven people between him and the president, and he could sometimes hear the man’s laughter. He watched as Ortega took a glass of wine from a waiter’s gloved hand and raised it to toast the people nearest him. A stunning young woman in a black evening dress who sat to his left seemed to be interpreting his words. After he finished speaking, Ortega drained the glass, made a bitter face, and reached for a sip of water. A moment later he used a napkin to wipe sweat from his forehead and from under his huge, black framed glasses. From where Chase sat, the president looked suddenly pale, brown cheeks having gone ashen. His crystal wine glass was definitely shaking. Was he somehow sensing his own mortality, his impending death? Chase peeked at his watch, wondering if the CIA shooter was taking a position on the distant rooftop.

  ***

  Geraldo Lopez took his seat among the journalists, morose over his recent run of lousy luck and resentful of the phony pomp and circumstances.

  His first foreign assignment was a ridiculous public relations fiasco masquerading as a state dinner. Who the hell cared what happened in a Third World shithole such as this? These Frito Banditos probably didn’t have a working helicopter, let alone anything dangerous, like a nuke or a flamethrower. A small fleet of unarmed UPS drivers could hold them off at the Texas border if the shit really hit the fan. A real foreign assignment meant safari and flak jackets, tracer missiles being fired in the background of hunched over stand-ups. His cameraman had been ushered off with his fellow lowlifes to eat in a separate room, probably one that could be hosed down easily.

  Geraldo had begun the year with a formidable contract deal at the network, getting him away from the grind in San Diego and onto the national desk. The managing editor had made a hundred promises about his future, explaining the path he’d take doing serious interviews and then getting a full thirty minute slot at 6:30 within the year. He was even provided a tutor to work on his accent, to add some color by juicing it up a little. Within the first few weeks, he could roll his Rs and artfully pause to decide on the most appropriate English word while in pressure situations, as if he hadn’t been born and raised in Gary, Indiana. He had been surprised to learn there was more than one N in the Spanish alphabet.

  Geraldo had suddenly found himself in a Manhattan apartment with a doorman, an around-the-clock concierge, and a great tip for an extremely discreet escort service. What more could a single guy still on the right side of forty want?

  Then, six weeks ago, a call had been put through to his tiny but smart office with a peek-a-boo view down West 66th Street. It had been some shady ass lawyer from San Diego, saying he was willing to work something out on behalf of his client and her baby she claimed was his. Impossible, he’d told the lawyer. A sixteen-year-old virgin, the lawyer had countered. Virgin, that was, until becoming a statutory rape victim of a famous news personality.

  Geraldo remembered her vaguely at first, then the details had come back. She’d been a piece of work, a real stalker type from the get go. She’d first appeared with a little pen and pad outside the KGTV front doors, begging for an autograph, big wide eyes and pouty lips working on a Ring Pop. Then she’d shown up at his favorite lunch spot with a little plastic camera and wearing some kind of cotton candy perfume. That’s when Geraldo had noticed the long legs and white cotton panties. How the fuck was he supposed to know she was sixteen? Was he a fucking bartender? Where the hell were her parents when he was balling her on his brand new waterbed?

  “What about an abortion?” he’d asked the attorney long distance.

  “We’re all way beyond that, now, aren’t we?”

  “Adoption?”

  “She’s a loving mother of your two-year-old son, Mr. Lopez. And I’m sure the age of my client is an important consideration for you in how we proceed from here.”

  Geraldo had slumped in his expensive, ergonomically designed office chair and ran fingers through his gelled hair.

  “My client and I also understand the importance of keeping the name Antonio Vespucci out of any headlines.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Antonio Vespucci was Geraldo’s real name, one he’d abandoned as a college junior, believing that a Hispanic would stand a better chance at being hired over an Italian. A journalism professor he’d slept with and trusted had convinced him.

  Geraldo Lopez had known at that moment that the financing of his concierge service was in serious jeopardy. A phone call from a second attorney claiming to represent yet another young woman came three weeks later, sealing the fate of his dry cleaning delivery and one-touch restaurant reservations. He had once again slumped in his office chair, chin on his chest, shaking his head at his treasonous crotch.

  Geraldo became distracted in his new job, spending far too much time calculating his remaining salary against the dueling acts of blackmail. His tension was building unabated now that he could no longer afford the two thousand dollar a pop escorts. He’d stumbled through assignments, endured a mortifying live studio interview with Oscar winner Sam Waterston from The Killing Fields. So what if he hadn’t seen the damn movie? His life had become depressing enough that he didn’t want to sit through two hours of bloody Cambodian poverty.

  A whiney male voice startled him back to his present circumstances. Geraldo adjusted his cuffs and wiped his nose with the back of a knuckle.

  “This is my wife, Margie,” the voice repeated. It came from a fat old man who was introducing some old hag for whatever reason. Lost in his miserable thoughts, Geraldo didn’t recognize his surroundings at first. He’d been fantasizing about hiring a hit man, but had to start counting on two hands the number of people who needed to be hit. Right before this god forsaken assignment, he’d had to move to New Jersey and begin taking the Path train into the city. New Jersey smelled like everything he’d imagined and then some. He knew every tattered garbage bag along the highways and train tracks contained mobster body parts. Having abandoned his Italian ancestry, which included not calling his parents for over ten years, he was all the more chilled by the idea of being exposed as a fraudulent Mexican. And he’d be mortified the first time some wiseass called him Tony around the newsroom. It would be worse than knocking up the girls. They were both eighteen now, so it wasn’t even a crime anymore, right?

  “Geraldo Lop
ez is an up and comer over at ABC, honey.” Geraldo looked into the milky eyes of Hugh McManny, then took his wife’s wrinkled hand across the table. Her grip was hard and ice cold. He immediately wanted his hand back.

  “Nice meeting you.”

  Geraldo waited for the old lady to settle into her chair before flagging one of the serving girls and motioning to his empty wine glass. The girl looked familiar and it took him a minute to place her face. He’d last seen it in profile, pinned to his bed after he’d taken her back to his room on his first night in this lousy country. She was a waitress in his hotel restaurant.

  “Did you play baseball, Geraldo?” It was McManny again, leaning forward, elbows on the table, great folds of neck skin erupting from his tux collar.

  “Yeah, a little, I suppose.” The server girl had nodded and disappeared without showing any sign of recognition. He’d left her a fifty dollar bill on the pillow before heading out for a swim and then wandering the gift shop. He’d given her plenty of time to gather herself up and clear out of his room.

  “When I was a kid, players had names like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Isn’t it funny how these days there seems to be one team all named Rodriguez and another named Lopez? And all the players seem to have full mustaches.”

  “Are you joking?” Geraldo kept his eyes glued to the door that led to wherever they kept the wine bottles chilled.

  “You know, that reminds me of a joke a man on the subway once told me.”

  Geraldo was relieved when the girl appeared with a full glass of wine, but disheartened to see her intercepted by one of the male servers. The prick snatched the glass from her hands despite her protests and hurried toward the head of the table. Geraldo watched President Ortega lift the glass to his immediate neighbors and mouth a toast from behind his bushy mustache. Then the bastard drank his wine.