Planet Willie (20 page)

“I can’t tell
you when I’ve had a better time talking to someone, Willie,” he says, moving
over to the control panel and flipping a few switches.

“She’s a
charmer, Billy, and I wish you all the best, but for the moment I wish me all
the best. I’m going in, and I want you to really unleash it. I’m talking World
War Three, I’m talking the Alamo over Acapulco, except this time we win.”

“This time we
win,” he says nodding.

“Have you been
drinking?”

“I’m just
excited,” he says.

“Alright then.
Let the show begin.” Billy grins at me and pushes a button, and five seconds
later the sky explodes in green and red. It’s just incredible. I mean you can’t
help but shout and say ahh. Everybody’s oohing and aahing as another round
explodes, and Billy’s staring up at the sky too, shaking with laughter, I mean
just bursting with excitement as his explosions paint the air.

“I’m off,” I
shout over the roar, giving him the thumbs up, and then I’m moving fast along
the wall, out of sight of the crowd, darting from bush to bush until I reach
the palm tree closest to the house and stop behind it to scout. Queso’s still
on the patio next to Maricruz, staring up into the heavens with everybody else.
There are a few white suits around him, but they’re staring too. Even the maids
have come out of the kitchen. They’re lined up on the far side of the patio,
their mouths open and giggling with pleasure to be free for a moment to enjoy
the spectacle. You have to give ol’ Billy credit. He’s got everybody’s
attention. I wait for the pink sparklers to start up, and then with the air
fizzing like pink champagne, I make my move. I dart alongside the house, aiming
for the closest sliding doors, keeping one eye on Los Blancos while zipping
along like a bottle rocket in boots, which isn’t as easy as it should be when
one leg’s got a Madonna wrapped around it and won’t really bend at the knee.

The door
slides open, I slip through and slide it shut behind me. Pausing behind the
curtain for a moment, I listen to the sound of the room. Once I’m convinced
that the only sounds are coming from outside, I risk a little peek around the
curtain. The room is empty. Though the plate glass I can see the back of
Queso’s toupee. Pink light floats down, covering the pleasure garden like magic
dust.

Across the
living room is the swinging door to what I’ve figured is the kitchen. Nearer to
me, across a shaggy white carpet, are two other doors. I choose door number one.
The knob turns, I slip through and shut the door behind me to find myself in a
pitch black room. The sound of my own breathing is near deafening. I fumble
along the wall until I find a light switch, flick it and get the scare of a
lifetime, which considering the lifetime is saying something. I mean, I just
about leave those boots behind and shoot up like a pink sparkler myself.
There’s a man in a sharp suit not three feet away. He’s staring me straight in
the eyes, and the game’s up, I’m thinking, until I notice that this is not just
any ordinary looking man, and that’s putting it mildly. He’s wearing what may
be one of the classiest belt buckles I’ve ever seen, and if I weren’t pressed
for time, I might honestly consider falling into his arms. He’s grinning at me
now, I mean the kind of grin you could get lost in. I’m lost too, I see now –
in a bathroom done up in elaborate gold fixtures, and the looker in the mirror
is none other than yours truly. Boosts the confidence, it does. I mean when
you’re looking like that, there’s honestly not a whole hell of a lot that could
go wrong. At least that’s what I think. Of course I couldn’t be more wrong.

With the
living room behind me now, I figure I’m out of any immediate danger. There’s
another door on the far side of the bathroom, which I take. That puts me in a
bedroom done up in a hunting theme. Fake bearskins cover the floor, the bear
heads still attached, white plastic eyes staring up at me with what looks like
fear. I pull up my pants leg and shift the Madonna up under my arm, and then I
keep moving. Dammit if this house isn’t a hell of a lot bigger than it needs to
be. I move through at least two other bedrooms, a dining room decorated with
portraits of the ancestors, generations of Quesos sporting pencil-thin
mustaches. I find a steam room, which brings back some pleasant memories, but
by the time I find myself wandering through the gym, where I don’t imagine the
machines get used any more than Queso’s books, I’m in a state of sheer panic
that Billy will run through his supplies before I manage to find the library,
much less introduce my Madonna to her ancestor.

By this point
I’m more or less sprinting, counting on that law of physics that says every
house must eventually come to an end, and it’s no small relief when I finally
burst through into a room with walls covered in books. On one end of the room
there’s a desk, on the other a gold table and a few chairs. Louis Quatorze, I
think to myself, and head for the gold table. There’s nothing on the table, so
I hop back over to the desk. There’s nothing there either. Through the ceiling I
can hear the boom of fireworks, and my heart starts to beat faster. Where the
hell is she? Spinning around in the middle of the room, I’m studying every inch
of it for signs of virgins. Then, on the wall behind the desk, I spot her. Queso’s
had her framed, and she is beautiful. I’ve seen her before, but somehow she’s
more beautiful when she’s real. She’s the kind of woman who could make me an
art lover, although maybe some of the impression she’s making in that library
comes from everything I’ve done to get to her. Darling and Ava Gardner, ol’
Lenny and my dive from the cliffs, my own unresolved mysteries and Rock
Lightford’s, too – maybe in some way that’s all a part of her now. Maybe that’s
what real art is, and maybe Fernanda understands that too, unlike the rest of
her family, which is maybe why I never doubted her. Even if I could find a way
to explain all this to Harry Shore, I don’t imagine he would appreciate the
Madonna any more. What that says about the true state of his own soul is
another question for another day, and one that’s none of the department’s
business, really. We just take orders, that’s all, and you can’t really
complain when you’re in Acapulco getting the girl in the end. At least that’s
what I’m thinking until I hear a doorknob turn behind me and dive behind a
leather armchair, which could have a chance of hiding me if I suck in the gut
and keep my heart from bursting.

From behind
the chair I watch Fernanda Shore ease into the room, which goes some way
towards bestilling the heart, though not enough to make me want to come out of
hiding quite yet. What is a bit concerning, however, is that Fernanda’s leg has
been miraculously healed, and although she looks even better with two tanned
legs, I don’t like the looks of the canvas she’s got rolled up in her hand.
It’s a nice trick, the fake cast – I’ll have to remember it for future
investigations. In the meantime, Fernanda’s already spotted the Madonna and has
unhooked it from the wall. She uses what she’s learned as an art dealer to
remove the frame and detach the canvas within seconds, at which point I’m
thinking I better join the proceedings before we’re all back to square one.
She’s carefully rolling up the original when somebody says, “Hold it right
there,” which is a nice line if only I’d said it. Fernanda looks up from the desk,
I peek around the armchair. Bella Farsinelli, naturally. She has a canvas too.

“Where did you
get that?” Fernanda and I say simultaneously. Fernanda notices me and rolls her
eyes. I figure I can come out from behind the chair.

“One of our
neighbors gave it to me,” Bella coos.

“Bitch,” Fernanda
says, and Bella, who’s apparently had quite a bit to drink, makes a run for
her. Fernanda snatches up a paperweight from the desk, and things are about to
get violent when the door opens and shuts again, admitting the Catholic church
in the person of Sister Lulu. She doesn’t even notice us at first, she’s so
nervous. She pulls a canvas out from under her habit, and only then does she
look up, and what was becoming violent now gets downright apocalyptic.

I’m the closest
to Lulu, so as she panics she goes for me, and before I know it things have
really gotten out of hand. I mean I’m nun-wrestling Lulu, thinking I’ve got a
pretty good idea of where she got her painting, while the other two nuts are
throwing haymakers like they’d just as soon steal the other’s head along with
the original painting. Pandemonium, to put it mildly. At one point, I don’t
even know who I’m wrestling anymore, but whoever she is, she knows the way a
man’s put together. Also, I keep losing my fake Madonna as I try to defend
myself, then grabbing for it as it rolls across the floor. At least I assume
it’s mine, but when you’re in a room full of women with a blood lust, it’s
honestly difficult to make any kind of assumptions.

This goes on
for a while, when a deafening explosion rocks the house and stops the fight in
a flash. Our faces are still twisted like ninja killers as we begin to hear
screams, distant at first, then coming closer. There’s a pause in the
fireworks, maybe, but almost immediately they’re popping again. Then the door
to the library bangs open, and a white suit comes running in. He freezes when
he sees us. He looks from one of us to the next, and on his face you can
actually see his brain trying to make sense of what he sees. When his brain
can’t come up with an answer, he pulls a gun from his waist, and then we’re all
screaming too. The gun’s waving all over the place while we scamper around
trying to get our hands on at least one Madonna. One of them’s real, but given
the circumstances, I really don’t feel I can take the time to unroll the one
I’ve managed to grab and stare into her eyes to see if they’re right.

Eventually the
suit gets to where he just can’t stand it anymore and fires his gun into the
air, at which point the ladies and I all decide to be happy with the Madonnas
we’ve got, fake or not. We make for the second door, which I happen to know
leads to the gym, and sprint through a series of steam rooms and dining rooms
and bedrooms, where the fear in the eyes of the bears is nothing now next to
the fear in my own.

I race into
the living room, and what I discover there is another mystery I can’t even
begin to comprehend. The party seems to have taken a decidedly romantic turn.
Couples, and not a few threesomes and foursomes, are draped over couches doing
things to each other that I might find shocking if I weren’t all of a sudden feeling
a bit romantic myself. Stowing the new Madonna up my pants leg again, I step
out through the sliding doors into the pleasure garden, where everybody in sight
is doing more than is strictly necessary to put the pleasure back in pleasure
garden. I mean it’s basically an orgy out there. Fireworks still burst
overhead, but in the bushes people wrap their arms around each other and
declare undying love in Spanish. I wander back to the launch area, where Billy
stands in a daze. The whole right side of his suit is covered in soot, and when
he sees me, he smiles like I might be the next Twiggy.

“What the hell
is going on, Billy?”

“I had a
misfire,” he says, speaking from a dream. “A big one blew my mortar.”

“Sorry to hear
that,” I say. “But look at these people. You think they put something in the
punch?”

Billy giggles a
bit. “The pheromones,” he says. “I guess they really work. When the mortar
blew, it took my briefcase with it.”

“Well I’ll be
damned,” I say, my eyes starting to wander all on their own towards anything
fleshy that moves.

“Did you get
the painting?” Billy says.

“I have no
idea,” I say. “And at this moment I can’t honestly say I care. You see that
girl?” She’s walking by, swaying like a hypnotist. Billy nods to her rhythm and
gives me a wink.

“Wow,” I say.
“In any case, to answer your question, I figure we’ve got a one in five chance.
What is that? Twenty percent? Hell, better odds than Kafka and Lulu ever got at
a poker table. Also, I’ve already had a gun pulled on me, so we better get out
of here.”

“I’m not
finished yet,” Billy says, now watching a cute blond shimmy by. The blond turns
out to be Fernanda. She sees Billy, Billy sees her, and they fall into each
other’s arms. Pheromones. It’s the wave of the future.

“I’ll give you
five minutes, Billy,” I say. “I’m heading for the truck so as not to get shot.
It’s a little phobia of mine. Take her Madonna if you can.”

So I start walking
back towards the entrance, through scenes you just can’t believe. There’s Bella
again, who’s about the last person I want to see, but she’s occupied with the
Professor now, who’s stumbling around with his hands over his eyes. When I ask
if I can do anything to help, Bella gives me a dirty look and tells me he was
standing close when the explosion hit, and the flash may have damaged his eyes.
She’s stroking his hair and clearly doesn’t want me there, so I move on. It’s
chaos. Los Blancos are firing their guns in the air. I guess romance is a new
sensation, and they’re a bit lost. There’s Lulu too. She may or may not be
fondling herself. She’s not the only one. Love is in the air, and I mean
literally. I stand there with a grin on my face just taking it all in, and the
grin goes even bigger, if such a thing is possible, when I see the Americans in
cheap suits flood in with guns drawn. “F.B.I.!” one of them calls out, and
within seconds Queso is in handcuffs and under arrest for the kidnapping of
Alberto Pasha.

25

Sunshine fills
my hotel room, awaking me in bed. I open my eyes and see strange clothing
scattered across the floor, which I can’t begin to explain. I’m still in my
suit, and I’m alone. The last thing I remember is standing in Queso’s garden,
and my lady acquaintance in leopard skin coming at me like mating season. I’m
assuming that some time afterwards, I got away. There’s a Madonna rolled up on
the bedside table. I can’t say if she’s the right one, but from what I remember
of the evening’s proceedings, nobody can say who got the right one except Harry
Shore and Professor Barry Farsinelli, who’s first on the agenda.

Also on the
agenda, like it or not, is high-tailing it out of Acapulco before too many more
people figure out what we’ve been up to. I make a move to call Billy’s room
before realizing that his room was my room, and Billy’s most definitely not
present. I sit up in bed and study the clothing on the floor. Must have been
quite an experience. I just wish I could remember it. No signs of a half-burned
light blue suit, however, or a bolo for that matter, and I’m hoping Billy made
it out alright. Did he drive us back down into town in the truck? I honestly
have no idea, and for once that’s not alcohol. No sir, that’s quite simply
pheromones.

What is clear,
however, is that I could use some breakfast. I look over at the clock on the
bedside table. Eleven o’clock, it says, so I hop down to the floor for a brave
run of pushups, even adding in a few sit ups to atone for whatever sins I may
have committed under the influence. Then I shake out the suit the best I can,
pocket my thirty-eight in case of emergency, and head for the lobby. I wish I’d thought of the thirty-eight a little sooner. It might have come in handy during
the library showdown, which I remember all too well.

In the Luna
Lounge I eat a full spread of pancakes and sausage, and it tastes good, but honestly
not near as nice as Pete’s in South Texas. I tip the waitress a Hidalgo, figuring I’ve got pesos to burn, and may be still feeling a bit romantic. She’s
got perfect white teeth and calls me
jefe
, which is hard to resist. She
offers me her number, but that will have to wait for another Mexico at another time. I thank her kindly and head out poolside to see if my partner’s
around.

Water aerobics
have finished for the morning. Now they’re doing aquatic yoga, which doesn’t
look like much fun. I stroll around the pool past the lounge chairs, past the
same girls in bikinis I watched tanning a couple of days ago, just a few shades
darker. At the far end of the pool, I spot Mister Pyrotechnics. He’s deserved
the name and more besides. Fernanda is stretched out beside him, one hand extended
to play with his chest hair. They’re talking a language that’s not English and
not Spanish, but something that sounds like birds chirping and probably only
makes sense to them. Fernanda feels my shadow and turns up to look at me.

“Isn’t he just
wonderful, Willie,” she says, apparently willing to forget the library. “He
knows so many interesting things, and he’s just so
cute
.”

Billy makes
some bird noises back at her, and if he’s noticed me, he’s not showing any sign
of it.

“We’re wanted
men, Billy,” I say. “Probably Fernanda too. We’d better get out of here.”

“Queso never
saw me,” Billy says, rolling onto his back to grin up at me.

“We’re getting
married,” Fernanda says. “We’re starting over, the both of us. For once I’m
going to do it right.”

“Where do you
go for the honeymoon when you’re starting in Acapulco?” I say with a grin.
“It’s a question I’ve heard discussed.”

“We’ve been
talking about that,” Billy says. “We were thinking of maybe combining business
and pleasure. I’ve got an important concern in Wisconsin interested in
pheromone technology, so we were talking about going up there and doing the Great Lakes.”

“And you?” I
say to Fernanda. “Don’t tell me you’re giving up the life of crime.”

 “I’ve finally
found a man that suits me, Willie,” she says. “So maybe crime doesn’t pay
anymore.”

“It never did where you were concerned, sweetheart,” I say, and though I was never too worried
for her soul, I’m figuring I can now officially call it saved.

“That’s
right,” she says. “I was never bad enough. At least not until I met Billy.”

They giggle a
bit and do some more bird talk until I start feeling like some other species.
“Then I don’t guess you’ll mind if I take your painting,” I say to her.
“Increase my odds, so to speak.”

“I left it for
you at reception,” she says. “I don’t ever want to see it again.”

“Well I
appreciate it. I guess your father will too.”

“Goodbye
Willie,” Billy says.

“Adios Pyrotechnics,
and use sunscreen,” I say, and then as much as I hate goodbyes, especially
these days, sometimes they’re the only thing left, so I turn and walk away.
Hell, maybe I’ll catch ol’ Billy down the road sometime. The world’s a big
place, but it’s not so big when you keep moving, and like it or not, I’ve still
got moving to do.

In the lobby I
recuperate Fernanda’s Madonna, which ups my chances to forty percent if my
calculations are right, but the chances of knowing anything certain take a hit when
I meet the Farsinellis over by the concierge. They’ve got their suitcases
beside them, and the Professor’s eyes are covered in bandages. Bella’s holding
a bottle of water to his mouth with more tenderness than I imagine she’s shown
him in years. I walk over and say hello.

“I lost my
painting,” Bella says, “so don’t even ask. When Barry got hurt, all I could
think about was getting us to a doctor.”

“Is he going
to be all right?”

“He’s always
had bad eyesight,” she says. “The doctors here say he may never see again. We
have an appointment tomorrow morning with a specialist in Denver, and I hope
he’ll know something more.”

“Is that
Mister Lee?” the Professor says, moving his head around like he’s trying to
sense me there.

“It is,
sweetie,” Bella says. “He came down for Mister Queso’s party too. He was just
saying goodbye.”

“Well I’ll
be,” the Professor says. “Best of luck to you then, Willie.”

“You too,
Professor,” I say. “Doctors work wonders these days.”

“We’ll be all
right,” Bella says, and who knows, maybe they will. A taxi arrives, and the
concierge picks up their bags for them. Bella takes the world’s foremost Botticelli
expert tightly by the arm and leads him down to the taxi, one step at a time. And
if forty percent were my odds, now it’s just a crapshoot. At which point it occurs
to me that an ex-gambler named Kafka still languishes in a Mexican jail.