Mile Zero (43 page)

Angelica took the
Marimberos
for the usual high-spending cowboys down from Miami after having scammed a success, with nothing more on their minds as they settled onto stools in the Wreck Room than to burn off stacks of hundred-dollar bills. She served them expensive tumblers of French cognac. Beneath dark brows they had the smoldering look of Latin sex in their eyes which Angelica so approved of. The oldest, about twenty-five, spoke perfect English. She liked the fact he didn’t wear a tight Hawaiian shirt opened to his guts with heavy gold chains swinging from his neck. He wore an Italian suit with a soft silk tie, a diamond pinky ring glittered on one finger, around his wrist was a gold bracelet engraved with
WOOFIE MY SAVIOR, LOVE KIT KAT
. She asked Woofie if he played guitar, because he kept drumming his manicured fingernails on the bar. His name wasn’t Woofie, he said, it was Hectore. He boasted of having studied at college in New Jersey, engineering. He was no Indian who worked his way out of the jungle grinding coca leaves to paste in stone bowls, wearing a two-thousand-dollar watch even though he didn’t know how to tell time. He was of the educated elite, an integral part of the industry which provided more than half his country’s hard currency. He was, if not the best and the brightest, the meanest and most adaptable. Angelica would take him home in a wink, except she was working and had to close up the bar alone. She could tell from the
halos in the pupils of Hectore’s brown eyes he was luded and coked to the gills, he’d be flying to the moon without a pilot by the time she called the night’s last call. When Hectore’s runny-nosed cohorts disappeared for a twelfth trip to the bathroom in half as many hours, he inquired politely if Angelica had any Cuban cigars. Before she could answer, Bubba-Bob, perched on the stool next to Hectore, offered free and voluminous advice. “Don’t serve Commie drags here. Want that Commie shit, why don’t you swim the ninety miles and light up in the Workers’ Paradise.” The spin of Hectore’s eyes didn’t seem to register the insult, but at the far end of the bar St. Cloud heard Bubba-Bob’s thick syllables slipping through a rummy sea. St. Cloud attempted to screw himself straight on the slippery barstool, it had passed the hour when most die-hard whiskey sulkers and gin gulpers staggered off into the precipitous night. He raised his glass to make a toast, surprised to discover Angelica, Bubba-Bob, and a dark guy drumming his fingernails against the mahogany bar top, were the only ones left in the smoky room. “God pity the sailors on a night like this,” St. Cloud blurted. “What is that supposed to mean?” Bubba-Bob demanded. St. Cloud kept his glass of rum aloft, a shaky amber beacon shining out to all on land and sea navigating the precipitous night, “Someone says he’s swimming to Cuba for a cigar, God be with him!” “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” Bubba-Bob slammed his fist onto the bar. “Angelica, bring this piece of squid bait another rum.” Angelica grimaced, “You already bought him the last thirteen.” Bubba-Bob hunched his thick shoulders, “Somebody’s got to pour sense into him, might as well be this bubba.” Hectore stopped drumming his nails against the bar top; the lobster boat Captain he was looking for was called Bubba Jonesby. St. Cloud raised his refilled glass to Bubba-Bob, “Here’s to the greatest shark killer in the Keys.” He glanced down at Bubba-Bob’s thick white socks, then winked at Angelica. “Here’s to the island’s best-dressed Captain, with or without his white socks on.” Bubba-Bob shoved his glass to Angelica, “Fill it up, and give the Commie a shot too.” Hectore’s mind was flying around the room, for the past six hours he had been standing next to the man he had come to teach a lesson. Life is always playing jokes. Hectore smiled at Bubba-Bob, “I too hate the Commie muchachos. What I meant was I want a cigar made by Cubans here. This used to be a famous place for Vueletas.” “Not anymore, bubba,” Bubba-Bob’s big hand slapped Hectore’s padded silk shoulder. “Cuban-made cigars around here have gone the way of pink flamingos
and twelve-year-old virgins.” Hectore raised the glass of rum Angelica poured to thin lips curving into a smile. His eyes roamed over Bubba-Bob as he sipped. He had his man; ugly red face, fish-stained pants, a Captain’s cap cocked over bristling hair with the stenciled message:
THE BUBBA BUCKS HERE
. Hectore thanked Bubba-Bob for the drink and inquired what his last name was. “Don’t have last names in this town,” Bubba-Bob’s callused fingers squeezed Hectore’s silk shoulder. “We’re all bubbas here. Ain’t polite to ask a man his last name or what his line of work might be. Know what I mean?” Hectore’s cocaine-propelled brain understood perfectly, he was glad he had Quaalude parachutes trailing his zinging thoughts, so many options to play, quick lessons to be taught. His mouth was dry and his shoulder twitched beneath Bubba-Bob’s grip. His wide-eyed gaze skidded along the back wall to the door of the bathroom where his pals were. He slipped a hand under his jacket, feeling for his switchblade knife as he cocked a foot beneath Bubba-Bob’s barstool. Twenty-four ideas jumped between his ears, he grabbed the last one, kicking the barstool from beneath Bubba-Bob. The two
Marimberos
rushed from the bathroom, rubbing runny noses and waving revolvers as Bubba-Bob crashed to the floor. Hectore dug a knee into Bubba-Bob’s chest, holding him down, the switchblade flashing in his hand. St. Cloud turned slowly on his stool at the far end of the bar, so this is how the world ends, he mused, watching the two
Marimberos
lock the front door and rip the phone from the wall. Hectore pressed the switchblade against Bubba-Bob’s throat. “What’s your last name?” “Bubba-Bob.” “The rest of it, you white fuck,” the blade drew blood. “Sweeny,” Bubba-Bob croaked. “Robert Anthony Sweeny.” “Don’t boo-shit me,” Hectore hissed. “Why would he do that?” St. Cloud asked in perfect if slurred Spanish, swiveling his stool to face Hectore. “Bubba-Bob lies, you cut his balls. Doesn’t lie, off comes his head. He knows you’re going to slice him up, least he can die by his right name.” The two
Marimberos
moved toward St. Cloud, Hectore waved them back. He needed time, an ocean of options leapt in his head, bright ideas swift as fish in a barrel, he grabbed a fish, it flew from his mouth toward St. Cloud in a big laugh followed by darting words. “Maybe instead of cutting the bubba’s head off I will take your eggs.” The
Marimberos
turned to see if Angelica was sharing Hectore’s illuminating humor, he always had such right ideas, like the pit bulls dining on kosher lawyer in Tampa, or the frog sewn into the mouth of a banker’s wife in Panama City. From Angelica’s position behind the bar she saw no
humor in the situation. One of the
Marimberos
fixed her with a conspiratorial leer, she backed toward the cash register, cracking a defensive smile. Hectore stood up from Bubba-Bob’s flattened body, starting toward St. Cloud. St. Cloud raised his hands, “Okay, I see you won’t be satisfied till you get what you want. Angelica, give the man a real Cuban smoke.” Angelica wiped her sweaty palms on her white shorts, “A Cuban smoke? Ah … oh sure. A Cuban smoke.” She moved slowly, so the
Marimbero
leering at her wouldn’t think she was planning a fast move. She reached behind the cash register and slid out a wooden cigar box. The
Marimbero
grabbed the box from her hands and flipped its lid open. “That box of cellophaned puppies is the true item,” St. Cloud advised. “Purebred Cuban Vueletas, smoothest tobaccos ever rolled between human hands.” The two
Marimberos
lit up, smiling with satisfaction, offering the box to Hectore. Hectore hesitated, the knife swinging at his side, silver fish jumping in his head. So many options, eggs to cut, heads to roll, cigars to smoke, a blond woman to unwrap. The leering
Marimbero
leaned across the bar and shoved a lighted cigar into Hectore’s mouth. A cloud of blue smoke rose as Hectore attempted to collect the silver flashes jumping in his head. He decided to exercise his sense of fair play. “Roll me a dollar bill,” he ordered Angelica. Angelica rang the cash register open, rolled a bill and handed it over. “Alonzo, draw a line down the bar to the drunk, the
borracho.”
The leering
Marimbero
next to Angelica looked the length of the bar to St. Cloud sipping his rum and grunted, “It’s too far, and he’s too drunk, it’s a waste.” “Alonzo!” The
Marimbero
sullenly dug a glass vial of cocaine from his pants, unscrewed a plastic cap and drew a snow-white line along the shiny mahogany counter. Hectore sauntered to St. Cloud, the knife in one hand, the rolled bill in the other, his words sliding from the corner of his mouth around the cigar. “Which of these do you want,
borracho?”
St. Cloud weighed the two choices, “Not polite to turn down a buck.” Hectore winked, handing over the dollar, “Your bubba bucks here, no?” St. Cloud eyed the trail of cocaine stretching to him along the bar, “If I bump that whole line I’ll be bucking from here till Fourth of July. Why don’t you just cut my balls off and have done with it?” Hectore slapped St. Cloud on the back, “That would be too easy. If you can’t suck the whole line,
then
I take your eggs.” St. Cloud slipped unsteadily off his stool, shoved one end of the rolled bill high into a nostril and bent over the line, set to snowplow through five feet of 100 percent Colombian pure and certain he wouldn’t live to
tell the tale. “Don’t keep us waiting,” Hectore’s voice coaxed with a laugh. “We have a job to do.” When it came to cocaine St. Cloud wasn’t a big tail wagger, he could take it or leave it. In a town where it was always around he preferred to leave it, not that he was high-horsed or defied prevailing fashion. He considered himself the upholder of a more genteel tradition, the conversational drunk. Although he made little conversation outside the dialogue existing in his pickled brain, he craved the way alcohol rattled loose syllables, then clanged them together like well greased sabers, creating sentences that slipped off one another with strikingly misguided purpose. As a word man of lofty alcoholic standards what he disliked most about cocaine was the cheap trick it played on human animals, who, after riding a bumpy line or two, thought they had something important to say. Time after time St. Cloud had been subjected to the late night torture rack of these animals jumped up on marching powder with nowhere to go, convinced their simplest guttural burp heralded an avalanche of syntactical inspiration to be seized upon by all and held up for lucid dissection. When these nervous animals finally produced entire sentences, no matter how boldly inane the content, they assumed their utterances had split hidden knowledge from the stone of wisdom. Such behavior was enough to make a drunken word man puke. St. Cloud was rabidly against legalizing cocaine, not because it was evil novocaine for the brain, a far more insidious threat prevailed. He dreaded being condemned to a coke-snorting generation with nothing to say but refusing to shut up. “We are waiting,
borracho
, time to blow out the candles.” Hectore’s words caused St. Cloud to hunch closer to the line. What the hell, he thought, he could use a little predawn pick-me-up. In one heroic inhalation he soared up the line, the searing cut of coke driving like an icepick up his nose, behind his eyes, through his brain, banging into his cranium, leaving him dazed with numbness as he came up for breath, his startled eyes focusing on Hectore’s knife coming down toward him in bright light, its sharp tip stopping before his forehead. Hectore’s voice came through the bright light, “Maybe that bump will loosen your tongue. What is the name of your Captain friend lying on the floor pretending he is an unborn chicken?” St. Cloud’s tongue wasn’t loosened, it was thick with numbness from the base to the tip. “Rubba-Bub Beaney, allweady tud yu,” St. Cloud mumbled, trying to get his numb tongue to work. The knifepoint pushed into his forehead, opening the way for a drop of blood to roll down along the side of his burning nose. Hectore pulled
the blade back from St. Cloud’s skin, he liked this
borracho
, he was not afraid to die, there were not many jokers such as this left in the deck, most were like the Captain cowering on the floor. Hectore decided this
borracho
was not a man who stayed drunk because he was a coward, he was something different, a man who stayed drunk because he was brave. This was one of the fast ideas swimming in Hectore’s brain, he thought it so brilliant he allowed himself the luxury of taking a deep drag from the smoldering Vueleta, blowing a pungent cloud of smoke into St. Cloud’s face. “Are you not lying to me,
compadre?
Isn’t the name of your Captain friend Bubba Jonesby?” “No, he’s not lying!” Angelica shouted. She now understood clearly what was happening, the
Marimberos
were MK’s men come to teach a lesson to Bubba Jonesby for violating the accommodation. She wished Brogan was in the bar to straighten the cowboys out, but he was in the Caribbean chasing the rumor of another three-hundred-year-old wrecked galleon. “Check the wallet in Bubba-Bob’s pocket. You’ll see you’ve got the wrong guy.” Hectore smiled through the swirl of blue smoke surrounding him, “Don’t have to check no wallets. I’ve got
my
bubba.” St. Cloud freed the thought on the tip of his numb tongue, “Angelica’s telling the truth, he’s not your bubba.” The words emerged in perfect Spanish. Whenever St. Cloud snorted too much coke he began thinking and speaking in Spanish, his mind laced with Latin sounds. The alchemy of alcohol and cocaine rendering him fidgety as a cat with a melting bone stuck in its throat. The bone was Pablo Neruda’s poetry, slashing passages of it escaped St. Cloud, as if from the lips of another man in another time, trumpeting the mawkish and maudlin, the sublimely humble and less than redeemable, a bravado of loose language rolling dangerous as whiskey barrels on the precipitous deck of a storm-tossed ship rounding Tierra del Fuego, blown forever off course in a sea of no rules, boastful waves crashing overhead, promising to sink from sight sordid prayers of hope, while the poet’s voice struggles from parched pages, sly verse winging duck-swift on waxed wind, above cargoes of lies capable of crushing syllables from oranges, seeds from tongues. God pity the wizened cocaine sirens howling on a night like this: