Dreams Die First (20 page)

I turned, put my head in the water and began to swim back to the shore in a slow, easy crawl. I could feel the heat of the sun warming my back and was awash in contentment. There was no doubt about it. They had something here. The good life. The only thing they didn’t understand was that it had to be available to all the people, not just a chosen few.

When I came out of the water, there was a girl standing near my clothing, a giant beach towel outstretched in her hands. I stepped into it silently and she folded it around me.

“I’m Marissa,” she said. “Count Dieter assigned me to be your translator.”

Her long black hair, dark eyes and high cheekbones belied her name. So did the loose peasant blouse and soft Mexican skirt. “That’s not a Mexican name,” I said.

She smiled, showing white, even teeth. “My mother is Mexican; my father is Austrian. I was named after his mother.”

“Are you related to Dieter?”

“We’re cousins.” She picked up my clothes from the sand. “Shall we go back to the cottage? The servants speak no English. If there’s anything you want from them, I’ll be glad to tell them for you.”

“I’m okay,” I said, starting up the beach. At the doorway to the cottage I turned and took the clothing from her arms. “I don’t need a translator. My executive assistant speaks Spanish.”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded. There was disappointment in her voice. “As you wish. But if there is anything else you should want, I am at your disposal. I’m in the guest relations office in the hotel.”

“Thank you.”

“Just one thing Count Dieter wanted me to show you. May I?”

I nodded and followed her into the cottage. A faint scent of verbena floated past me. She bent over the coffee table to press a small button on the side and a drawer rolled out. I looked over her shoulder.

It was all there. A wooden cigarette box of machine-rolled joints with filter tips, a plastic jar of cocaine with four tiny Mexican silver spoons and another box of crushed herbs. “Mescaline?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Thank you.”

She closed the drawer. “I can go now?”

I smiled. “Will you be at dinner?”

“If you want me to be.”

“I think it would be nice.”

“I will see you then.”

After she had gone, I opened the drawer and took out a joint. Then I went into the bathroom and filled the tub with warm water. I smoked the joint while lying in the tub. It was lovely.

Afterward I took a nap.

CHAPTER 28

The telephone woke me. It was Bobby. “Can I see you for a minute? I’ve got a great idea.”

“Come on down,” I said. I got out of bed and slipped into a bathrobe. The living room was empty and the door to Lonergan’s room was open. I looked in. He was nowhere around. It was still daylight, even though it was after eight o’clock.

A butler came in, his white teeth flashing. “
Sí, señor?
”

“Scotch on the rocks,” I tried.

He nodded and went behind the bar. I watched him fix the drink. At least, he spoke that much English. I took the glass and went out to the patio. The air was still warm even though the sun had gone.

I felt good. Very relaxed and low-key. There was something about this place. Not like Los Angeles, where the world kept screaming in my ears. This was really out of it.

Bobby came through the wrought-iron gates. “They really know how to do things here,” he said. “We’ve all got separate bungalows. My boys and I in one, the girls right next door.”

“How did the session go?”

“It was okay. I got a few good shots, but the girls weren’t ready.”

“What went wrong?”

“My fault. I forgot to prep them.”

I laughed.

“You’d think that was the first thing they would do,” he said in an aggrieved voice. “They know they’re coming down here to show pink. You’d think the least they could do is to give themselves a little trim. Except for the blonde, it’s like trying to shoot through a forest.”

“What are you doing about it?”

“I turned them over to the cunt coiffeur. They’ll be ready tomorrow.”

“I hope he will,” I said. The cunt coiffeur was one of Bobby’s assistants. It was his job to trim the pubic hairs, clean the areas between cheeks of the buttocks and do the makeup for the photo sessions.

“He’d better be,” Bobby said darkly. “I told him if he fucks himself out, I’ll kill him.”

“What’s your great idea?” I asked.

“I’d like to bring King Dong down here for a jungle layout with some of the girls. I got this whole scam where the girls dressed as white hunters come upon him in just a loincloth with his dong hanging out below. They get turned on and try to civilize him. He turns the tables on them and winds up the number one pimp in town.”

“It’s a funny idea, but it won’t be easy to do,” I said. “We caught a lot of flak the last time we used him in a layout.”

“It was all from jerks who were jealous of his cock. But the issue sold a hundred thousand more than any other and is still the biggest copy of the backlist.”

“Circulation said that the gays are all buying it.”

“Sure they are, but so are a lot of women. I’ve seen them go absolutely glassy-eyed and come right in their pants the minute he takes out his tool. Even the most hard-bitten models get turned on no matter how many fuck layouts they’ve done.”

“I don’t know. We’ve got the racist shit to contend with. The blacks say we’re putting them down by playing on the old fear. The red-necks say we’re demeaning white womanhood.”

“Let me get the set. You can always make up your mind when we have the pictures.”

“Okay.” I laughed. “This should be fun. Let me know when you shoot it. I’d like to see what happens.”

“You’ve got to wind up with an inferiority complex. He’s the closest thing to a bull I can imagine. Twelve inches long and he had six orgasms in four hours at our last session.”

“I’ll wear my wet suit,” I said.

“What time is dinner?” he asked.

“Ten o’clock.”

“I’ll grab a shower and change.”

“No rush,” I said. I went back inside, took a joint from the drawer and gave it to him. “This is dynamite shit. Skip the shower and smoke this in the bath. It’s beautiful.”

He took the joint and sniffed it. “Thanks. I’ll call the office first and make sure they get him down here on the morning flight.”

Lonergan and Verita came back a few moments after he’d left. “Care for a drink?” I asked as the butler appeared.

“Dry martini,” Lonergan said.

“Tequila,” Verita ordered.

I looked at her. “I thought you were a scotch drinker.”

“We’re in Mexico.” She smiled. “I’m home now.”

The butler brought the drinks and disappeared. Lonergan sat down opposite me; Verita took the lounge chair next to him. “We just strolled around the place,” Lonergan said.

“What do you think?”

“They spent the money all right,” he answered. “There’s no doubt about it. But Verita came up with something interesting I thought you should hear.”

I turned toward her. “Yes?”

“I spent all afternoon talking to the personnel. You learn a lot more that way. They know things even the owners don’t.”

I nodded.

“They have an opinion on why the place didn’t make it.”

“I’m interested.”

“The gays put it away.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Dieter brought his international crowd down. They really took over the place. So much so that when he asked them to cool it, they turned on him and laid a heavy rap on the hotel. And you know that crowd. They practically run the jet set. If they approve, society comes running, like Capri, like Acapulco, like the South of France. If they say it’s démodé, you drop dead. Like Patino’s place down the coast and Porto Cervo, Aga Khan’s resort in Sardinia.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why should Dieter sit on them? After all, they were his friends.”

“One of the stories I heard was that some rich queen stole his steady and that it made him angry.” She licked some salt from the back of her hand and took a sip of the tequila. “Another story is that his father made him push them out. He wants Dieter to marry and carry on the family name. He’s got the girl picked out, a second cousin or something.”

“Is her name Marissa?”

Verita nodded. “That’s the name they mentioned. She works up in the office. You met her?”

“Yes. Dieter assigned her to be my translator. I told her that you were with me and that I wouldn’t need her. But I asked her to join us for dinner.”

“I thought you were sleeping,” Lonergan said.

I laughed. “That was before I took a nap. I went for a swim. When I came out of the water, there she was.”

“You’ll never get the money crowd back now,” Lonergan said.

“That’s good,” I replied. “Because it means von Halsbach has no place else to go. We’re the only game in town and if they lose us, they go into the sewer.” I went behind the bar and refilled my glass. “The deal I was going to offer them just went down by fifty percent.”

“You were going to offer them nine million?”

“No. That’s half of what they were asking. I was going to offer them twelve. Now it’s six.”

“Something else I think you ought to know,” Lonergan said.

“What’s that?”

“I just heard from my office. There’s some talk around that Julio has a big part of the action down here.”

“Any proof?”

He shrugged. “That airstrip is just a short hop from Culiacán.”

I knew what he meant. Culiacán was the drug center of Mexico. Almost every shipment of dope that came into the United States from Mexico either originated there or was transshipped from that point. “Any chance our hosts are in on it?”

“I have no way of knowing.”

I pulled at my drink and looked at Verita. “You’re going over the books tomorrow?”

“Murtagh said everything would be ready for me.”

“Okay. Keep your eyes and ears open. If there is anything that doesn’t make sense, no matter how trivial it may seem, let me know.”

***

Dieter and his father were waiting at the bar when we came up to the main building. Slim and only slightly shorter than his son, the count was in his early sixties, with crew-cut iron-gray hair, sharp, hard blue eyes and a dueling scar on his left cheek. If he’d had a monocle, he would have been straight out of a 1940s Warner Brothers movie.

“I have been looking forward to our meeting, Mr. Brendan,” he said in soft Mayfair English. “I have heard a great deal about you.”

“Good, I hope.”

He smiled. “Of course. Here we listen to nothing but good about people.”

“It’s the only way to live,” I said. My remark didn’t seem to register. “Thank you for the accommodations. They’re lovely.”

“It is our pleasure. I only hope you will be able to spend enough time with us really to enjoy it.”

“I’ll try.”

His eyes brightened as Marissa came toward us. The Indian-looking girl I had met that afternoon had disappeared. In her place was a tall, aristocratic lady in a long, clinging white dress that set off the tanned skin of her body and the black hair that fell below her shoulders. She kissed him on the cheek. “My niece, the Baroness Marissa,” he said proudly.

“We’ve already met,” she informed him, holding her hand out to me. “Mr. Brendan.”

“Baroness,” I said, smiling.

She let go of my hand as she turned to the others. A moment later we followed the count to the patio, where our table had been set up under a large tree. Marissa sat between the count and me and I could not tell whether the perfume I smelled came from her or from the scented air of the garden.

Dinner was European, very formal and very dull. All the right things were spoken, but nothing was said. In contrast with our table, Bobby, the models and his assistants were having a ball. I could tell from the shouts of laughter that they had managed to find their own source of supply. They all were stoned.

Lonergan and the old count seemed to find common ground. Maybe it was their age, but my uncle seemed genuinely to enjoy the dinner and the stories the count had to tell. I was so bored I couldn’t take it any longer and finally pleaded a bad headache and retreated to the bungalow.

The first thing I did was light up a joint. Then I sat down on the patio and stared up into the night sky. There seemed to be more stars than I had ever seen before. I wondered if anyone out there in that limitless night was getting stoned and thinking the same thoughts.

I heard the creak of the wrought-iron gate. Marissa’s white dress floated like a soft cloud in the darkness. “I came to see how you were,” she said.

“I didn’t know you were a baroness.”

“I’m not really. But my uncle takes great pleasure in introducing me that way.”

“Here, have a toke,” I said, holding out the joint.

“No, thanks. That stuff makes me crazy.”

I laughed. “If I had to stay down here, I’d go crazy without it.”

“My uncle is very old-fashioned.”

“Whatever got him into this? It seems so out of character.”

“He felt he had to do something. He owns all the land. And the government kept complaining that if something wasn’t done they would break up his holdings and distribute them among the
campesinos
.”

“That’s no excuse to blow thirty million dollars.”

“He put in the land and about six million. The government put in ten and the rest came from private investors.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they Mexican or foreign?”

“I don’t know.”

“He would have been better off if he had brought some people down from Las Vegas.”

She didn’t answer.

I took another toke and patted the chair beside me. “Come, sit down.”

She didn’t move.

“Did you come up here on your own or did Dieter send you?”

She hesitated a moment. “Dieter.”

“Did he also happen to tell you that fucking me is part of your job?”

Again she didn’t answer.

“What happens if they don’t make a deal with me?”

“The government has threatened to foreclose on them. They will lose everything.”

“Thirty million dollars is a heavy trip to lay on you. It’s really not fair.”