The Laughing Falcon (6 page)

He paused near the entrance and, out of old habit, clocked the area. Never enter a place suddenly, observe what’s around you, evidence of the enemy’s presence, escape routes. The drill: burned into memory, recast as instinct. He spotted two top-of-the-line Land Cruisers, both with American diplomatic plates. A man lounging in the shadows nearby, a quiet watcher. What occasions this visit from the agents of the imperialist raj?

The restaurant was small, eight tables, six bar stools, the rich essences of garlic wafting from the kitchen. The food had much improved since Billy Balboa hired a Spanish chef. Slack eased his aching body onto a stool at the burnished bar and asked Billy for a double Ron Centenario with orange juice. Billy handed him a pile of old tabs instead, his bar bill unpaid since July.

“Pura
vida
. With sorrow I bring up a matter of two hundred thousand colones.” Billy was pot-bellied and pale, his skin never touched by the tropical sun. Slack had once seen him sober, a few years ago, during national elections, when they padlock the bars.

“Billy, I’ve just had a day like the Battle of Stalingrad. I got robbed, my back is fucked, and I’m suicidal.”

His voice had raised dangerously. Billy held up a hand in warning.

“So shoot yourself. I have big customers tonight,
personas de clase alta.”

He brought out the bottle, topped up his drink, splashed some in a glass for Slack, and nodded along to the tale of his Falstaffian labours on the river, the pillaging of his house, an unbroken torrent of gloom.

The rain had begun to pummel the tile roof, drowning conversation. Slack looked around: a few familiar faces here, gringos, permanents, some illegal, hiding from
Migración
. Slack no longer had that problem, he was a citizen now, a legal, a Tico.

At a corner table, eating jumbo shrimp, those must be the big customers, diplomats, three men and two women. More careful scrutiny, however, revealed one of them to be a local blackguard, Juan Camacho, the mayor of Quepos. El Chorizo, they called him, he even looked like a sausage, mottled and soft and meaty.

“With Camacho, that is the U.S. ambassador and Senator Walker from Washington with their wives.” Billy had to shout over the rain. “They are paying cash. They are not running a tab since five months.”

Senator Chester Walker? Here? Chuck, he liked to be called, thicker of waist than he appeared on the tube, but a tall, ruggedly handsome man, you could mistake him for Charlton Heston. Soldier’s haircut, metal grey, he’d be about sixty. Next to him in melting makeup, poured flawlessly into a tight dress, his wife, Gloria-May Walker, the former Vegas dancer.

What the hell were these banana Republicans doing in this far-flung outpost of their empire? Then he remembered – there’d been a conference in San José, something about Pan-American security, terrorism, he’d heard about it on the short-wave he no longer owned. A day off for sun and surf, Mayor Juan Camacho their guide to the hot spots of Manuel Antonio, looking for some way to shuck them.

Ex-Colonel Chuck Walker: Vietnam war hero, U.S. army secret ops, a dubious history of piloting America’s undeclared
war in Nicaragua. He was probably here to enhance his international image, he was about to make a run at the primaries, all the right noises, God, unborn babies, and the freedom to bear Uzis. A political lightweight, a dark horse, sitting on the far right rim of the Republican party.

The other man would be Ambassador Gerald Higgins, a presidential crony from the deep South, rewarded with a pleasant little trough in Latin America. Older, avuncular, good listener. Polite, tightly wrapped wife. The Secret Service agents were easy to spot, two at an adjoining table, one at the far end of the bar with a mug of coffee.

Slack was so absorbed by this sighting of a rare species that he paid little attention to a voice behind him, something in Spanish to Billy about a radio for sale. He slowly swivelled in his seat and saw a Sony twelve-band short-wave in the clutches of a skinny hand. The young man holding this radio was brazenly wearing one of Slack’s T-shirts, “Mono Titi Tours, River and Ocean Kayaking.” Slack had seen him hanging around the squat, Flaco, they called him, his nickname, thin enough to squeeze between bent bars. A crackhead like most of the local thieves, it showed in his eyes, his spastic movements.

“I am interested in that radio,” he said.

Flaco paled, recognizing Slack, and he began to back-pedal as Slack slid off his stool. “I found it on the road! By the Boca Vieja bridge!” As Slack took one long step forward, Flaco peeled open the blade of a knife: it was Slack’s, his Swiss Army knife, the
raton
had ripped that off, too.

Slack feinted, bobbed, caught Flaco by the wrist and twisted it, driving him to the floor with a scream of pain. He kicked the knife loose, then lifted him by the ankles and shook him like a salt dispenser until the birding binoculars and the cell phone fell from his pockets.

Slack retrieved them, along with the knife, and bent to Flaco and sliced through his belt. “Now I’m going to cut your
pinga
off.” It would be a noble gesture in support of population control.

But Slack contented himself with jerking down Flaco’s pants, shaming him, revealing the shrivelled apparatus of his sex. Still screaming, grabbing his crotch, the skinny thief scrambled out into the rain. The Secret Service guys stopped looking distressed, removed their hands from their jackets, humourless, not joining in the general laughter.

Billy Balboa put on a sour face, letting him know matters could have been handled more delicately, Slack wasn’t good for business. But friends who’d enjoyed the show bought him drinks, and even the senator was smiling at him, maybe he liked the way Slack handled the natives. His wife kept staring at him, a contemplative smile as if she was sizing him up.

Slack treated his comrades in turn, generous, his credit was good here. Boisterous with drink, he launched into one of his harangues: this was a land where thievery was a respected way of life, the beaches unsafe, the cops crooked, mobs from Spain and Italy moving in, taking what that asshole Camacho over there wasn’t keeping for himself, look at him truckling to the rich and powerful. The mayor was glancing at him, nervous. Slack realized he was fairly
borracho
, told himself to slow down, maintain some vestige of aplomb.

“I gotta see an ol’ friend,” he said, and pointed himself in the direction of the men’s room, a route which took him near the senator and his group, he had to squeeze past Gloria-May Walker’s chair.

“Looked like you had some training,” Walker said. “Military?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Well, keep it up, soldier.” A resonant deep voice, it carried well and with authority.

“Damn rights,” said Gloria-May Walker, “y’all keep it up now.” Throaty, melodic, the sound of southern bells.

Juan Camacho tore his eyes off her tits and nodded curtly at Slack, a reluctant token of recognition. Sponging as usual, wolfing down U.S. taxpayer jumbo shrimp, the mayor was behind the squatters, getting them electricity, water, padding himself with a prime cut of the land.

At the urinal, he felt unsteady, and he had to brace himself with a hand against the wall. He had better reduce his intake. Ocean tour tomorrow, bunch of aging jocks from Philadelphia, sports fishermen, they’d be bringing girls from San José. Two groups this week, he could pay down some of his debt.

He stood in front of the mirror, crouching to see the top of his head, the tousled red hair streaked with the rust of age, the four days’ growth of beard. Looked like a scarecrow.
Le grand slaque
, the French had called him, gangly, loose-limbed, but now with the threat of a paunch.

Gloria-May Walker gave him a look as he squeezed by again, a skeptical raise of a lacquered eyebrow. The senator was carrying on in his bull-moose voice about how you can’t give in to terrorists. “Once you start doing that, you’re playing by their rules.” The ambassador and his wife were nodding, machine-like, no disagreement there. Camacho forced himself to smile at Slack, who pantomimed a sloppy kiss in return. Slack leaned to Gloria-May Walker’s ear. “You might want to warn the senator that guy owns the local whorehouse.” She smelled good, he liked the way she laughed, a lusty chuckle.

He returned to his stool and to a refilled glass and watched as she whispered to her husband, repeating the calumny, he hoped. A few minutes later, she rose from the table and joined him at the bar. “I hear tell you’re one of the local characters.”

She was thirty-five, though looked younger: flawless tawny skin, sly wide eyes, golden hair. Her lips were large and fruity. Eager breasts thrust out above an hourglass waist, though the sands of recent time had trickled around her hips and rump.

“I’ve been around long enough to qualify.”

She swung gracefully onto the next stool and told him everyone called her Glo. She and her husband had just come from a conference in San José that had bored her to her toes. Chuck was going to take her up to the Eco-Rico Lodge for their wedding anniversary — had he heard of it?

A luxury joint in which tenderfeet played at roughing it. “You’ll like it. Lots of wildlife.”

She slowly stretched a leg out for Slack to examine, then crossed it over her knee. “I feel so white next to you. Where do y’all buy a tan like that?”

Slack should have showered, he felt grungy. She seemed a little drunk, too; he guessed all this flirting was a game she played.

“So I hear y’all have some sort of river guiding enterprise.”

He ordered himself to be sober. Might be able to sell a tour here, a senator and a diplomat, it could be lucrative.

“Ocean, too. Kayaks.” Try not to slur.

“Sounds like a right nice way to pass a little time.”

He was a sucker for a Southern accent.
Riot nass way to pass tahm
. “Nothing to it. Like riding in a big rubber ducky.”

“Well, now, I think I might just get off taking a ride on your big rubber ducky.”

Slack regained his balance after nearly slipping off his stool. He looked at Senator Walker, and their eyes locked briefly: a steely look like a warning. But the senator continued his monologue. Terrorists. He’s an expert.

Slack held a match to Glo Walker’s cigarette, and when his hand wavered, she cupped it in warm slender fingers. Again he smelled her, something expensive, something a honeybee would like. Slack wasn’t going to get into anything here, this also smelled of peril.

“Chester’s staying at this eco-joint only a couple of days, he has to get back to Washington for a vote. Then I’ll be coming back here by myself.”

She was about as subtle as a nail through the head. Chuck Walker was rising now, approaching them, his smile taut. A cuckold, obviously, an undesired quality in a politician, hinting of impotence, inability to deliver.

“Can I stand you another one, soldier?”

It wasn’t until Slack was well into his latest double rum that he felt everything fall out of focus. He was vaguely aware the others had joined them, Ambassador Higgins and wife, Juan Camacho, wiping shrimp dip from his lips. Senator Walker had claimed his wife, his arm around her waist, and was continuing his oration, a jumble of words, a man obsessed: communism wasn’t defeated by a policy of spineless pacifism, terrorists are the new world enemy, America wasn’t going to stand for it, time to draw the line, can’t neutralize the enemy without adopting a policy of acceptable loss.

It was the Pentagon bafflegab that finally got to Slack. “Terrorism has piss all to do with warfare,” he heard himself saying, a slurred growl met by an abrupt heavy silence. “It’s theatre. It’s not aimed at the victims, it’s aimed at the people watching, at the fucking CNN cameras.” He was unable to brake his tongue, but suddenly he realized he didn’t care, so he added, “Anyway, who’s the terrorist when some damn schmuck in Baghdad or Belgrade gets his ass blown off by an air-launched missile?”

The discomfort at the bar was palpable. Eyes shifted away from him, a mistake had been made here, these solid pillars of America had engaged the wrong person, an ugly customer, some kind of agitator. A Secret Service agent was heaving into sight.

“He’s just a drunk, señor, a beach bum.” It was Camacho.

The last thing Slack remembered was rising to advance on Camacho, but in doing so falling off his stool. The rest wasn’t clear …

At half past five, a defeated moon was turning pale and stars were dimming. The clouds had fled to the horizon, packing up like sandbags, a dam the sun would breach, already sending heralds of its coming, gentle daubs of peach and rose. Hermit crabs scuttled away and hid until the lumbering creature passed on, running barefoot on the silky sands of ebb tide.

Playa Espadilla, a mile from park entrance to Punta Quepos, thrice each way today, penance for the sins of the night – when, presumably, grave felonious acts had occurred. Slack tried to piece together the ugly scene. He had bruises on arms and shoulders, so more than words had been exchanged. The Secret Service agents had obviously got into it. He had an uncertain picture of one of them intervening when he’d made a grab for Camacho, whom he’d sent sprawling to the floor with a bloody nose. He remembered staring at a spinning ceiling fan. He had somehow got home. He had not been arrested. He wondered why.

A few bumps, some minor aches. A head-crunching hangover was the worst damage he had suffered, a self-inflicted wound, acceptable loss of brain cells. This morning he had found two hundred-dollar bills in his jeans pocket, how did they get there?

He moved onto the soft dry sand near the forest better to hear the songbirds awakening in the almond trees and mangroves, and turned to see the sun bulling above the massed cloud, slapping it with colour. Now Slack reached the western end of the beach, El Final, it was called, barred by a wall of rock and jungle, and here he turned to the ocean, he would swim the final mile.

“Let him go.” Slack remembered Senator Walker giving that order. Why?

Slack stood panting at the water’s edge, possessing this ephemeral moment, the canvas of ocean and sky, the jungle
canopy kissed by sunlight, the whisper of the waves, a pair of sanderlings dipping at the surf’s leavings.