Bad Juju & Other Tales of Madness and Mayhem (2 page)

Ed, Suzanne, and the co-pilot sat at the back of the bar near the
pissoir
. Overcome by sudden dizziness, Walberg collapsed into the fourth chair. His forehead felt like an electric hotplate left on too long. Surprisingly, the bottle of beer brought by the one-armed waiter was ice cold. Walberg rolled it back and forth across his brow.

“A touch of fever?” asked Ed. “Give it a day or two. Either it’ll burn itself out or you’ll be dead.”

Walberg took a sip of beer; then stared morosely into the bottle. “I should have gone to the Galapagos,” he said to no one in particular.

Suzanne passed him a smoldering spliff.

“Get a life,” she said.

“Is it legal to smoke this stuff in public?”

“Just take a hit and move it on,” said Suzanne.

Walberg did as he was instructed. The waiter arrived with another round of beers and shots of rum
anejo
.

“
Telefono por Senor
Walberg,” the waiter said.

“Who the hell knows I’m here?”

Ed gave Walberg a noncommittal shrug. Suzanne sucked loudly on the roach. The co-pilot was in his usual never-never land. Walberg walked to the bar with the waiter and picked up the ancient handset.

“Hello?”

“It’s me” came an urgent whisper. The voice belonged to Always. Next came an echo like bat signals bouncing off the walls of a vast steel pipe.

Always spoke again: “The man with the motorcycle. He scares the shit out of me. Bring a gun with you.”

Before Walberg could even gulp, the line went blank.

“Hello! Hello! Fuck!”

What was he supposed to do now? Where could he acquire a gun?

Ed’s arm came around Walberg’s shoulder.

“Let’s get some fresh air,” he said.

Outside it appeared to be even hotter than back by the
pissoir
. Not even a cockroach moved.

“It was Always, wasn’t it?” asked Ed. “Be careful, pal. You’ll end up with two wheels in the ditch and your dick tied in a square knot.”

“She told me to bring a gun,” confessed Walberg.

“Where the hell are you going to find a gun?”

“I thought you might help me out.”

“No fuckin’ way.”

Suzanne appeared beside them. She opened her purse and pulled out a semiautomatic weapon as sinister as a chunk of antimatter. She did a quick run-through, ejecting and inspecting the clip, cocking and firing on an empty chamber, reloading the clip. She handed the pistol to Walberg.

“You can borrow mine.”

“How much?”

“Pay me in kind.” Her hand brushed his crotch.

At that very moment the only cab that Walberg had seen in Puerto Greenberg slumped and wheezed up the street like a methadone addict in search of a fix. It stalled at the corner, just as Walberg climbed into the backseat.

“Where to?”

“World’s End. On the South Road.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Have to charge you extra. No lights down that way. Sometimes there’re bandits. Marxists.”

“Here,” Walberg said, handing the driver a twenty-dollar bill.

The driver folded the greenback into a tiny square and slipped it under his tongue, then cranked the engine. Nothing happened. After delving under the hood for
cinco
minutos
, he tried again. The engine coughed like a smoker with terminal emphysema. Finally it caught.

Shortly they left behind the last light of Puerto Greenberg. But the road through the jungle remained two lanes of cement, not downgrading to gravel or mud. Someone had paid someone off.

The cab rounded a curve and shimmied to a stop, throwing Walberg helter-skelter against the back of the front seat. Caught in the headlights, a metal chain stretched across the highway between two posts. A sign hanging from the chain read World’s End –
Privado
.

Walberg, his lip bleeding, clambered out of the cab. Without a moment to lose, the taxi backed and turned, backed and turned, its transmission screaming; then sped away, back toward Puerto Greenberg. The sky was full of stars sailing toward entropy.

At a slow jog Walberg started up the dirt track beyond the chained entrance. The blue-steel barrel of Suzanne’s pistol, jammed into his waistband, rubbed irritatingly against his genitalia, already inflamed by some tropical rash.

After a mile or so, he came upon a single-story Caribbean-style plantation house facing the beach. There was no evidence of a barbecue in progress. The house was pitch black. Starlight revealed bales of razor wire unrolled in defensive thickets around the structure.

A fusillade from an assault rifle tore up the night, turning the banana leaves above Walberg’s head into confetti. Walberg ate dirt.

“Don’t come any closer,” croaked a male voice.
Was it Smith or the zoot-suited gangster? Where was Always?

As if in response, a hand lightly touched his shoulder. He turned his head. Always, in halter-top and jogging pants of some dark color, bent toward him, her pale skin like thick English cream.

“The old man…Smith…and the biker have taken over. They want me dead.”

“Taken over what?” asked Walberg.

“The business.”

“AAAhhh.”
Is it something illegal?
he wondered.
A ganja farm? Maybe a meth lab? Or just flaky? – exporting a homeopathic cure for cancer derived from tropical frog livers?

“Did you bring a gun?” hissed Always.

Walberg rolled sideways, pulled out the midnight black semiautomatic and held it aloft. A ray from the newly risen waning moon impaled the weapon.

In the next instant Always lunged forward and tried to wrest the pistol from his grip. Her teeth clamped onto the fleshy zone of his hand below the little finger. So unexpected was her assault, in a flash she held the pistol pointed at him.

Just then, Smith or the other man, attracted by the scuffle in the brush, opened up again with the high-powered automatic. Always’s head exploded in slow-motion gore.

Holy shit!
thought Walberg.

He began to crawl rapidly away from the plantation house clearing. Unable to find the road, he moved along the edge of the jungle abutting the sea. A thousand yards from the house, he broke from the jungle and began to run up the white sand beach. Barely a dozen loping strides later, he pulled up in excruciating pain. The spine of a sea urchin had pierced the sole of one of his Pumas.

Somehow he extracted it from his flesh in one piece. Then wrapped the wound with his handkerchief.

Limping like some dysfunctional Iraq war vet, he resumed his trek up the beach toward Puerto Greenberg. Dawn was a gray thought as Walberg entered the central business district.

When he retrieved his key at the Miami’s front desk, the Chinaman handed him a note. It read
Leaving today. Too bad it didn’t work out. Suzanne

Walberg went back outside just in time to see the seaplane soar over Puerto Greenberg before heading stateside. He wondered when the next plane might arrive. Maybe he could book passage on the tramp freighter.

A three-legged dog hopped by. The town seemed more decayed and run-down than he remembered from the previous day. A man naked but for a Corona T-shirt slept on the pavement.

Walberg went into a small cafe that sold ice cream, coffees and tropical drinks. He ordered an
espresso doble
. Two of the whores from the other night on the street came in. They stood at the ice cream freezer, considering its contents and, obliquely, Walberg, as he sipped his coffee. He looked like a vagrant.

The one with black curly hair isn’t half bad,
he thought.

He appraised her ample tits, tight stomach and long firm legs. One of her eyes remained static. When she turned so the light from outside hit it, he realized the eye must be made of glass. She gave him one of those “check-it-out” smiles.

He looked away in embarrassment. Then down at his Rolex.

It had stopped working.

Incident in the Tropics

“That young man’s staring at me,” Marge says.

Ray Elrood, absent-mindedly perusing a set of female buttocks flouncing their way between two rows of plastic cafeteria tables, glances up at his spouse.

“Which young man?” he asks.

“Over there. In the soccer outfit.”

Ray follows the trajectory indicated by Marge’s nod. Across the aisle, a platoon of Latin youths is wolfing sandwiches and meat pies, slurping sweet drinks. They lounge provocatively; engage in
macho
shenanigans and repartee.

“They’re all wearing soccer uniforms,” he says. “Must be a local high school team stopping after the game.”

“It’s the one with the mustache. And the red bandanna.”

Ray picks out the young man Marge means.

He looks about sixteen, smooth-faced except for a fringe of hairs curving in a half-moon above his upper lip. The accoutrement of some 1940s bebop hipster. His hair is jet and wiry, cut close to his skull. He wears the same black-and-gold T-shirt and sweatpants as the rest of the team, augmented with a bright red bandanna tied around his neck in the manner of a romantic poet. Gesturing dramatically, he concludes telling two teammates some wild-ass tale of seduction. They vie with each other in dissing its veracity. A mock tussle breaks out.

“He’s not staring now.”

“Well, he was,” Marge says defensively.

“Ogling your tits, was he?”

“Don’t be crude.”

Ray scratches his chin. He’s not sure whether Marge expects him to do something about the stranger’s aggressive gaze. Perhaps slap him across the cheeks, demand satisfaction by dueling pistols at dawn. Ray’s inclination is to drop the entire matter without further ado.

“Maybe we should head back to the tour bus,” Ray says, glancing at his cheap plastic wristwatch. (“It is recommended,” reads the cruise line brochure, “that no jewelry or expensive watches be worn while touring ports of call.”)

“I need to use the bathroom,” Marge replies.

Gathering up her oversized purse, she glances around, at last heading off to a far corner of the cafeteria. She strides like an alpine hiker at the mall.

On this, the fourth day of a ten-day cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale, Ray and Marge and a dozen other adventuresome passengers are on a day tour to the capital of the Republic. The day is waning. Marge has a bladder infection.

As Marge disappears from view into the
bano mujer
, Ray pushes away the plate with its abandoned sandwich crusts and brushes his shirt for crumbs. What I need, he thinks, is an ice cream cone. He pushes up to a standing position, looks again at the youth with the bandanna and peach fuzz, then meanders toward the dessert counter. His dick keeps hoping for another glimpse of the provocative buns.

He wanders around, licking the mango swirl ice cream, but the owner of the outstanding booty is nowhere to be found. He sits down just as Marge comes up.

“Where’s the camera?” she demands, frowning at the ice cream cone.

“Half of this is yours,” Ray says, waving the hand holding it.

“With your spit all over it? Gross! Now, where’s the camera?”

Ray gives her a blank stare, his lips blow out a puff of air. Pffffff.

“You didn’t bring the camera,” he says, “because I wanted to take a picture of the bronze-horsed Hero of the Revolution and you said, quote, ‘Oh fuck! The camera’s sitting by my bed back on the ship,’ unquote.”

“I’m worried about you,” Marge says. “You’ve totally imagined that little scene. It figures you’d contract some unusual form of Alzheimer’s where you become delusional as opposed to brain dead.” She tries to put her hand on his forehead. He pulls back.

“When I went to the john, the camera was sitting on the table directly in front of me,” Marge says. “Now it’s gone.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t here,” Ray says. “I’m not that far gone.”

“You wish,” Marge says, “because you went to get ice cream and left the camera sitting here. And that hoodlum stole it.”

“What hoodlum?”

“The one sitting over there with the faggoty mustache and the scarf. He’s been eyeballing my Canon digital all afternoon.”

“Him? The one who was checking out your mangos?”

At that moment, a woman with a management badge pinned to her pale blue polo shirt walks by.

Marge, still standing, addresses her with ferocity: “
Senora
. My camera’s been stolen by that scumbag over there.” Her words boom across the room. Her nod identifies the hipster-poet soccer player as the perp. His name, embroidered across the left breast of his soccer shirt, is Angel.

Marge is of the school of
gringo
travelers who thinks speaking in loud aggressive tones will overcome the impenetrable barrier between American-ese and the local lingo.

When she singles him out, Angel bounds to his feet. Anger suffuses his face like cheap Burgundy on a tan shirt. He accuses Marge of lying. Demands an immediate apology. All in Spanish. He’s studied English in secondary school, but is too unsure of himself to speak it. His teammates crowd around, looking angry and nihilistic.

The coach pushes through the throng of testosterone.

“What the fuck’s going on here?” he asks in perfect English.

“That boy stole my camera.”

“Impossible. Why would a spoiled rich kid want to steal a camera from some fat
gringa
?”

Blows are exchanged. Marge uses her bag like a shillelagh. Ray swoops his arm across her chest and drags her backward. The cafeteria manageress steps between Marge and the coach, who promptly slaps the manageress in the face. She slaps him back.

Before things get too rambunctious, some kind of policeman in a faded blue uniform with frayed shirt cuffs edges through the tide pool of emotion.

“
Mas tranquilo
,” he urges, his hands raising and lowering.

Turning to Ray, Marge asks: “What’s he saying?”

“Something about
tequila
, I think.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“This whole thing doesn’t make any sense. It’s off the rails,” admonishes Ray. “Let’s just get on the van and get back to the ship.” He looks again at his watch. “If we leave now, we can still make the first sitting for dinner.”