Caught (22 page)

What a day, Slaney had said. Then she reared back and went crazy with her feet, kicking up a storm. They hauled themselves up the ladder and she was first, and her ass and her legs, what a body, the water a transparent sheet that peeled away from her shoulders and dripped from the bikini bows at her hips.

They lay down trying to catch their breath and he was getting a burn.

She talked about her mother dying and the boarding school she grew up in. A school with lawns rolling in every direction and big trees and forget it. You weren’t getting out of there except on the holidays.

The teachers were strict and big on music and she’d learned to sail on Lake Ontario during the summers but during winter the dormitories were cold.

You could see your breath, she said. She told him he could never imagine how lonely. Not when he had all those brothers and sisters elbow to elbow at the one table, he couldn’t. Not when he had both his parents.

She said that music was the only thing in her life she could depend on. I’d love to play for you sometime.

I’d like that, he said.

She said her father. She loved her father but she didn’t know him at all. He was old already when she was born. Been through the war and what that does. A doctor in the navy.

He’s administration now, she said. He runs a hospital in Toronto. He’s high up there, a very busy man. She rolled over on her side, her head resting on her hand.

Very, very busy, she said. Her parents had grown up in England and they had wanted to get out. Sick to death of Europe after the war. They’d decided Canada. They’d wanted a clean break. Her mother had died when Ada was seven, a flu with complications. Then she was off to boarding school.

At seven? Slaney said.

You should hear me on the piano, she said. He kept his eyes closed but he knew she was studying him.

Cyril was going to buy her a baby grand. She laughed. Already she was doubting Cyril.

He’s full of ideas, Cyril is, she said. But Slaney could tell, she was still willing to believe. The way he danced with her at that gala, she told him. Her father had been getting an award.

They had a twelve-piece band, she said. And one of those machines that makes bubbles. You know those machines?

Slaney said it sounded very different than the dances he’d attended.

Like Lawrence bloody Welk, she said. Bubbles floating down all over the place. I’m kind of a big deal, she said. On the piano.

Good for you, he said.

What about you?

I play the fiddle, he said. Nobody makes a big deal.

She didn’t have anything to say to that. They both lay there in the sun not speaking.

Then Slaney told her his name. He said his name wasn’t really Douglas Knight. That was the name on the fake passport. He said it was the name of a guy about his age who had died in Montreal. He said he thought about the guy now and then and he wondered if he was somehow keeping the guy going like this, if he was living the guy’s life, not his own at all.

That’s just foolishness I’m talking now, he said.

What’s your name? Ada said.

David Slaney, he said. That’s my name.

Colombia

Carter had a
collapsible spyglass with four brass cylinders, a rosewood sheath on the last. He gave it a flick with his wrist and each cylinder shot straight out, until the spyglass was nearly as long as his arm. He put it to his eye and turned the wheels near the eyepiece. His other eye screwed up tight and he was showing his teeth. After a moment Carter announced they had the wrong spot.

They were anchored in a cove with a white beach about fifteen miles from Cali in the Valle del Cauca, Colombia, according to the map. But Carter said the map must have been wrong.

Carter had sobered up. They were picking up the cargo and Carter wanted to be sober for the occasion. He had joined Slaney on deck and he’d put on a white shirt and a linen suit.

We’re in the wrong bloody place, you fool, Carter said. There’s nobody around.

But it had been Carter who was navigating. Slaney snatched the spyglass from him and pressed it to his eye.

He moved the telescope and the water streamed by in hazy jerks and he steadied his elbows on the rail and adjusted the brass wheel and each melting sparkle of sunlight became diamond-hard. He swerved the glass six inches to the left and the beach flew sideways like a scarf tugged by the wind and lurched to a stop.

He lifted it half an inch, very gently, and there were the camouflaged army tents in the shadows, under the palm trees, beyond the beach. He counted fifteen tents.

A man in army fatigues was sitting on a chair in front of a large tent with a rifle across his lap. Another man approached him, took a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, and tapped it and held out the pack. The man in the chair swatted his hand around his head at insects. Slaney heard the far-off buzz of a boat engine, growing insistent and menacing and loud.

Here they come, Carter said. Slaney lowered the spyglass and saw a speedboat racing toward them. It was a blur in the afternoon haze, a streak of aluminum, mirage-kinked in the heat, bouncing on the waves. Slaney and Carter stood on deck and watched them come. They told Ada to go below.

Do me a favour, Slaney said. She turned the last page of her book and flung it over the side and it skipped three times like a stone and floated away.

You want me to miss all the fun, she said.

Make yourself scarce, he said, as a favour to me.

Slaney felt tense and happy. Carter had gone down below and come back with the suitcase full of money. It was an ordinary brown leather bag and it had heft.

Ada stretched one arm up and yawned and flapped her towel and wrapped it around herself. She had been topless and coated in baby oil all day.

They give you a choice around here, lead or gold, Carter said. Did you know that, Slaney? It means a bribe or a bullet.

Tell her to go below, Slaney said.

Go below, Ada, Carter said. You heard the man.

The man, Ada said. Yes, I heard the man.

Several minutes later the speedboat was upon them and turned sharply just before it hit and the wave splashed against the yacht.

You’re not coming, Carter, Slaney said.

I’m coming, Carter said. I’ll do what I bloody well like.

Carter climbed down the ladder and stepped into the speedboat, the men reaching for his hands to steady him.

Slaney passed down the suitcase with the seventy-five grand into the boat and Carter gripped it between his knees. Slaney had taken a quarter of the hundred thou out of the suitcase so that he could barter. If Lopez wouldn’t let the pot go for seventy-five, he’d come back and get the rest of the money. After Carter was settled, Slaney climbed down the ladder and stepped into the speedboat.

They were soldiers with gold watches and gold teeth and they had houses with big pools and five years ago they were peasants making a handful of dollars a month growing coffee. Or they were the ruling elite who had lost the family fortune and had to maintain a lifestyle. Slaney got all this from Hearn, but he could see it for himself, a different kind of confidence than when he’d been here before. He felt like the mood had shifted.

Now they were armed with machine guns and a few of them had grenades and leather belts of bullets hanging over one shoulder and they had hunting knives and some of them had pistols on each hip like cowboys in the movies.

The men asked if it was cold in Canada.

Mucho frío, sí, Slaney shouted over the engine. Carter attempted to explain hypothermia and they all laughed.

One of them said, Horses, yes? Carter clearly had no idea what they meant. There was a burst of Spanish and one of them said, RCMP. Carter said yes, they had the RCMP.

They were all hearty about the RCMP and then there was silence.

One of them said, Toronto?

Newfoundland, Carter and Slaney said in unison. Then there was silence until they reached the beach.

Slaney had expected Carter to make a fuss about getting his shoes wet. But he took them off without a word and rolled up the linen pants and he carried the shoes in his hand above his head and Slaney realized he preferred Carter drunk. The men offered to carry the suitcase but Slaney carried it on his head.

A few huts and the sound of a radio and excited Spanish coming out in bursts of static. A dog came out to greet them and she had big black teats hanging to the sand. A sad German shepherd face but the legs were too short. It had the hunching gait of something starving and maddened by flies.

There was nothing but the huts and then a roar overhead made Slaney and Carter duck and the soldiers laughed at them. The plane was so low they felt the pull of it. It touched the tops of the palm trees and they swayed in its aftermath and coconuts thumped down into the sand. Probably armed guards or field workers flown in for a few weeks’ work.

They had a landing strip. Five years ago they’d had nothing. Slaney tried to look unimpressed. Carter leaned in and asked if he thought Sanchez was really a colonel.

It’s Lopez, Slaney said.

Lopez, Sanchez, said Carter.

There’s a difference, Slaney said. Do you want to get us shot?

We should have brought a bottle, Carter said. He reached to straighten his tie but he wasn’t wearing a tie. They approached the man Slaney had seen in the spyglass but he was standing at attention with the rifle across his chest, staring straight ahead at nothing. The soldier lifted the flap of the army tent and Slaney and Carter ducked inside. Shafts of sunlight came through the mosquito-net windows, making the room a swampy orange. It was cooler inside and smelled like candlewax and wet canvas.

Colonel Lopez was standing before an impressive table. He waved a hand at it, inviting them to sit. There was a platter of papaya and guava and melon and bananas and some roasted chicken and a basket of bread. Tomato and cucumber slices arranged in a spiral, shredded cabbage and beets, fried plantains.

Langosta, the colonel said, and he lifted a silver dome off a platter and revealed four barbecued lobsters. A young girl, of perhaps fourteen, lit the candles. She had thick black braids and acne on her forehead and cheeks and she kept her eyes on the wick until it was lit. Then the girl sat in a chair in the corner with her hands on her knees, ready to jump if she was needed.

While they ate they discussed the price. Slaney started at fifty.

Lopez asked about their journey and offered them coffee and had the girl on the chair bring in a teapot and they were given espresso cups and saucers. She kept one hand on the loose-fitting lid as she poured and eyed the stream of coffee with a fixed surliness. Everyone was silent as she moved from chair to chair with the teapot.

You must understand how many people are employed on this end, Lopez said. He said he would accept no less than one hundred thousand dollars for the two tons of marijuana they were purchasing.

I will go no lower, he said. He asked them to consider the unpredictability of the growing season, the peasants who broke their backs working in the fields, and the need they had to feed their children. He mentioned the heat they worked in, the sweat. He talked about the economic disparity between their nations, the growing violence in his country for workers in the industry. He said that an offer of fifty thousand dollars for the product they were going away with was an insult. As he spoke his face became flushed and his voice became louder and more sonorous.

Then he raised a hand to halt the conversation altogether and he said, Flan.

The girl at the back jumped up so quickly from her chair that Slaney saw Carter flinch. Slaney had no idea what
flan
meant but the girl snapped open the tent flap and disappeared and returned with dessert.

Slaney said he appreciated the position Lopez was in, and the position of his workers. He spoke about the imperialism of the United States, particularly in Central America, and he mentioned each of the countries there and the dictatorships propped up by the West. But then he spoke about Newfoundland and the relative poverty on the island and how cold the water was and how hard it was to make a living from the sea as his forefathers had done. He spoke about the Commission of Government, and how his grandfather had had the right to vote stripped from him and the bad teeth of Newfoundlanders and rickets and scurvy and frostbite. He spoke about weather, ice, and snow and the great sealing disasters.

Then he and Lopez bartered by five thousand, up and down, and then by a thousand. And five hundred dollar lots.

They were at eighty thousand when Carter began to speak about the coffee.

It’s so strong, he said. He asked if the beans had been grown in the area. He mentioned the first occasion he’d tasted coffee; a distant relative in London, England, had served it to him when he was a child of six.

He’d been sitting across from the mounted head of a rhinoceros, he said. Poor creature.

The head was bigger than I was, Carter said. All that bone and horn, the glassy eyes. Before that I’d only ever had tea with lots of milk. He talked about staring at the mounted rhino and how he’d expected the rest of it to crash through the wall at any moment. He thought it had just poked its head through the plaster to look around before charging them. He believed it must have had terribly long legs, on the other side, and that he would be stomped to death.

Carter had been rocking the side of his fork through his flan, shovelling big pieces in quickly, talking with his mouth full. Slaney realized the bartering was frightening him out of his wits and that he needed a drink. Then Slaney saw that Lopez had his napkin scrunched tight in his fist.

Seventy-five, Slaney said. Lopez agreed immediately.

A soldier came through the flap and took the briefcase and returned when they had finished the flan. He spoke to Lopez in a whisper, cupping the man’s ear with one hand. Then he straightened up and stepped back against the canvas wall.

Everything is tranquilo, Lopez said. I prefer it we settle business out in the open.

Slaney said he preferred things that way too.