Planet Willie (17 page)

“Burglary’s a
skill too, sweetheart.”

Her eyes
overflow, and tears run down her cheeks. “I just wanted to help,” she says. “I
just love these little orphans so much.” Now she’s outright weeping, and I’ve
learned enough from her now that there’s not much point in prolonging the
interview, so I leave her there mumbling about her dearly beloved orphans to
walk back out into the plaza, where I’m treated to a beautiful Acapulco sunset.

20

When I go down
for breakfast in the morning, reception has a message for me from somebody
called Drita, which I vaguely recall may be another name for Twiggy. The
message says that the Farsinellis have a meeting scheduled with Queso that
evening, and that in the meantime she’s gone after Lulu. It also says that the
police called in the night and are holding Kafka. Our Twiggy may be insane, but
she’s turning out to be a pesky little investigator, so I decide to leave the
real criminals to her for the morning so I can get over to the police station
and see about releasing Kafka into the general population again.

The jail’s not
a big place and can’t have room for more than a few cells. I walk up to the
front desk and tell Rodrigo, the officer on duty, that I’d like to bail out an
amigo. He wants to know the name of this amigo, I tell him Kafka, which doesn’t
appear to ring a bell. Then I tell him the amigo’s Albanian, and he tells me the
Albanian’s not getting bail.

“What are you
holding him for?”

“Public disturbance
and an expired passport.”

 “
Public
disturbance
?”

“And an
expired passport,” Rodrigo says, lighting a cigar so he can blow some smoke in
my face, while down a corridor I hear what sounds like weeping.

“Can I at
least get back there and see him?”

“No visitors,”
he says. I can’t say I like Rodrigo’s attitude, and it may be at this point
that I decide I’m not leaving without the kid.

“Then can I
see the Chief?” I say. “He happens to be a close personal friend.”

“Chief is in
the capital.”

“Then let me
introduce you to another close personal friend of mine, the one thousand peso
bill. Looks like some kind of monk there on it. Not sure what his name is.”

“Hidalgo,” the officer says, laughing a bit. “Why don’t both of you get out of here.”

Desperate
situations call for desperate measures, and conveniently my life has been, or
was, one long desperate measure, which prepares me in a sense for what comes
next. Also conveniently, I discovered a talent for opera just yesterday, and it
feels like time for an encore performance. I mean if you’ve got it, you’ve got
it. So I step away from the desk to give myself a little room to work, run
through the scales a couple of times for tuning and whatnot, then ease into it
real soft-like. Just a little humming at first, getting the feel of the melody,
so to speak. And then I bring it on in.

“
La
Cucaracha, La Cucaracha
….” Nice and easy, just easing myself into the tune.

“
La
Cucaracha, La Cucaracha
….” And though I’m not real sure of how it goes
after this, I do feel that you want to get that cucaracha hopping around a bit,
so I start getting it out there, cuca-cuca racha-racha-ing to the music. Catchy
little tune. Sort of grabs you by the vocal chords. I mean this must be how
Mister Pavarotti feels when he gets up there on stage in
Carmen
or
La
Traviata
or one of your finer operas. And if there was ever an opera
written about the lowly cockroach, you better believe I’m singing it, one hand
on my belly like the stars on public television. Cucaracha! Let me tell you it
does feel good, right up until the moment half the police force of Acapulco,
and believe me that does include Rodrigo, swarms in like pesticide to squash me
like a bug. Not sure what they’re throwing in there, but you can’t deny the
effectiveness. A little something Mexican, perhaps, as truth be told it’s
nothing like anything I’ve ever encountered north of the Rio Grande. Hell of a
lot spicier, you could say. Does it hurt? It does. Does it bother me? To the
contrary, officers, to the contrary. They say that when the nuclear Armageddon
comes, the last creature walking the face of Planet Earth will be the lowly
cucaracha.

A while later
I awake to find myself alone on the cement floor of a cell. My hands are still
cuffed, and my right arm feels
like an appendix – one of those organs we
no longer need, I forget what they’re called.
The suit’s taken a beating
too, which I sure as hell don’t like, but it’s so dark in there that’s it’s
difficult to assess the damage. I move around the cell a bit to see if I can
find a cot or something a little more comfortable to stretch out on, but
there’s nothing. I walk every inch of that cell, staring hard into the darkness
and cursing even harder. After a while I hear a voice that sounds like it’s
coming through the wall.

“Willie?” it
says. “Is that you?”

Kafka, from
the sound of it. I curse him a bit for getting me into this, he curses me right
back for letting them take him away in the Mercedes.

“They’re never
going to let me out of here, Willie.”

“Don’t worry,”
I say. “We’ll figure out something.” I ask him about this passport of his, he
tells me his visa had run out in America, but he had no intention of going back
to Albania. Problem is, you can’t renew your passport without a proper visa,
and then it just didn’t come up with all those Madonnas I was handing out to
the border police. Then he says something that makes up for all the pains I
suffered during my short-lived opera career. He’s been up to Queso’s, and Queso
is one bad hombre.

He was taken into
the hills by the men in white suits, he tells me. A high fence ran around the
property, and men with guns and more white suits watched the front gate. Kafka
begged the driver of the Mercedes to give him a few days to pay off the debt,
but the driver wasn’t talking. He parked the car in front of a white-columned
mansion and led Kafka into an entry hall. Italianate, Kafka calls it. White
marble everywhere.

They took him
into a sort of library with a lot of leather-bound books on the walls and also
quite a few Renaissance paintings. Queso was there sitting in a leather
armchair at a Louis Quatorze table painted gold.

“Louis
Quatorze?”

“It’s a French
style. I’m an artist, Willie. And believe me, I don’t like having to relive
this.”

“Alright. What
did Queso look like?”

He tells me
he’s a big man with a bad toupee and a thin mustache. When Kafka came in, he
was in a white robe, eating a bowl of strawberries and cream. He stuck out his
chin at an adjacent armchair, down into which the white suits pushed Kafka.

“
Circumstances
seem to have brought us into a business relationship, Mister Kis
, he said.
Something like that.”

“Mister Kis?”

“That’s my
name.”

“Wish you’d
told me sooner,” I say. “Seems like we should be using that more often in
public. Kafka Kis. I like it.”

But Kafka’s
not liking anything at this point. He tells me Queso said that he would be
happy to extend their business relationship for a week, after which time the
relationship would be terminated. Kafka understood from this that what would be
terminated was Kafka.

“Don’t worry,
kid. A week should give us enough time.”

He bangs on
the wall. “You have the money, Willie, right? So pay him off.”

“Calm down,
Kafka. Let’s be smart about this. That money may come in handy, so we better
hold onto it for a few days.”

“Please,
Willie,” he says, his voice catching.

“Then what
happened?” I say.

“He showed me
the Madonna,” he sobs. “I think he was trying to impress me. It was laid out on
the gold table beneath a piece of cloth. He hasn’t framed it yet. I guess
Alberto just took the canvas and left the frame. That would make sense. Queso
said it’s worth a million bucks.”

“Well is it?
Was it the original or one of yours?”

“It looked
original. Something in the colors. I don’t think I painted them like that.”

“And he really
loves art that much? He’ll have a hard time selling a stolen painting.”

“He’s giving
it to his daughter for her eighteenth birthday,” Kafka says. “There’s a big
party tomorrow night. He throws one every year so people can come up and see how
he lives in his mansion and gives his daughter million-dollar birthday presents.
This man will kill me, Willie. As we were sitting there I could hear gunshots
outside. That’s the way they’ll do me.”

“They were
shooting people?”

“That’s what I
thought. Really they were just getting ready for the party. Another guy in a
white suit came in and whispered something to Queso, and Queso started
screaming all these things in Spanish I didn’t understand. Finally he calmed
down enough to tell me how he wants fireworks, but the fireworks people are
incompetent. He had them all fired as I sat there, and they’ll never work in Acapulco
again. Oh Willie, they were probably
terminated
.”

“Then they
brought you down here?”

“Yeah, and
there’s more. Alberto was in here last night. They had him in your cell. This
morning they took him away, I don’t know where.”

“This is
working out even better than I expected,” I say.

“We’re both in
jail, Willie!” Which is a fair enough point, but what interests me more at the
moment is how the mysterious Alberto got to Acapulco. Kafka confirms what we
already knew about the Shore robbery. Fernanda hired him to go down to Texas, but of course Queso knew about the Madonna before calling Fernanda, which must have
been Lulu’s idea. Fernanda could get to the painting easier than Queso could.
He just sent a couple of his men to south Texas to wait, knowing Fernanda would
send somebody sooner or later. When Alberto showed up, they kidnapped him. One of
them took his car, and the other drove him down to Acapulco with the painting.
Queso was furious when they got to the mansion. The Blancos weren’t supposed to
take Alberto with the painting, but from what Kafka’s seen, the Blancos aren’t
too bright. Now they’ve made up some drug charges and are keeping him out of
sight until they can decide what to do with him.

“What did he
say about the cocaine in his car?”

“Queso’s men
must have planted it,” Kafka says. He’s silent for a while, then his voice
comes softly through the wall again. “I wish I’d never left Albania.”

“You don’t
mean it, Kafka,” I say. “You can’t go back. Just take it from me, because
that’s one thing I’ve learned: you can’t go back. Like it or not, we can only
go onwards and upwards.”

21

I’ve had
better nights of sleep, even on cement floors. Let’s just put it that way. Maybe
I doze occasionally, but the rest of the night I star in a little horror movie
called
The Revenge of the Cucarachas
. Didn’t like what they heard me
doing to their national anthem, apparently, and so they come out in full force
to exact revenge on my bodily person. I don’t guess cockroaches bite, but by
dawn and with practice it appears that a few of them are learning. I spend hours
twitching, trying to keep the little critters guessing. Meanwhile I attempt to
figure out how I’ll get past all of Queso’s white suits to the Madonna. And
does Fernanda have any idea what she’s doing? By now the Farsinellis have had
their date with Queso. I can assume the good professor confirmed its
authenticity and that Bella drank too much, but did Fernanda make the date too,
and is she crazy enough to have asked Queso to give it back? Then again, she doesn’t
want the painting, she just wants money, and if she miraculously gets any for
it, she’ll have Twiggy to deal with. Hours go by, until my brain’s so fried
with thinking I’d be hard-pressed to remember my name.

In the morning
somebody switches on a light out in the hallway, and the cockroaches scatter.
My lucky streak continues when Rodrigo’s replacement comes around to uncuff me.
He gets me up on my feet, and I don’t know what hurts worse at this point, the
brain or the body. It’s like that old philosopher’s debate – mind versus body.
Well I’m both and not liking it much. The cop tells me they’re letting me go. I
ask if that includes Kafka, he tells me I can stay if I want to. So I recuperate
The Kid and call out for Kafka one last time. His voice is faint through the
wall.

“I’m awake,”
he says.

“What about
your paintings?” I say. “Are there any left?”

“Che’s still
got a few,” he says. “Are they letting us out?”

“Not you just
yet, apparently,” I say. “Hold tight and I’ll try and get in touch with the
Chief.”

“I’ll never
gamble again, Willie,” I hear him say.

“I’ll bet a
thousand pesos you do.”

“Okay,” he
says, and then the cop’s leading me out the front desk, where he returns my
wallet, my belt, and most importantly, its buckle. Then it’s freedom for Willie
Lee in sunny Acapulco, where the morning heat is already like something you
could chop up and wrap a tortilla around. I have three coffees in a cafe next
door and go through the wallet to make sure I’m not missing anything. The pesos
all appear to be present, including more than my fair share of Hidalgos, but most importantly I find the little business card I’m looking for:

Bill
Sidell

Mister
Pyrotechnics

Eastern
Arizona Fireworks Association.

Just outside
the cafe there’s a phone booth, but before calling Billy I decide to make good
on a promise to keep Lady Eralda apprised of her boyfriend’s whereabouts. So I
find another little scrap of paper in the wallet and dial the number on it.
Before I can even identify myself, she’s saying, “This is Eralda,” still in
that English accent so noble I’m looking around for somebody’s hand to kiss.
Appears to have found the accent that suits her, Lady E, and she’s sticking
with it. We catch up on all the gossip at the Hotel Blue, my home away from
home in New York City, and then I tell her there’s been an Alberto sighting,
and that a man named Ricardo Queso is holding him somewhere in Acapulco. She
gasps into the phone and loses her accent for a brief moment. She wants to know
what she can do, and I ask if Alberto is by any chance an American citizen. He
is, she tells me, and so I suggest that the F.B.I. might be interested to learn
that an American citizen has been kidnapped in Mexico. If I were her, I’d
proceed immediately to the phonebook and maybe drop the accent for a few
minutes once she’s got the authorities on the line. She thanks me profusely,
and we promise to meet up in New York soon.

Then I call
Billy. He’s real happy to hear from me, and we end up speaking for at least
half an hour. Apparently a lot has happened in the life of Billy Sidell since
we last played golf together, starting with a catastrophic hangover after a
magical evening with Drita.

“Who’s this Drita?”
I say.

“You were
calling her Twiggy,” he says. “I don’t think she appreciated that. She’s a very
sensitive woman, Willie. I’ve never met a woman like her. And the lovemaking?
Well, I’m not a guy to kiss and tell, but it sure was something.”

“Don’t tell me
you’re in love with Twiggy.”

“I might be,
Willie. I mean I haven’t spoken to her since then, but man just being with her
made me question everything I’ve been doing in my life. I tried explaining this
to Betty. I’ve always tried to be honest in my marriage, you know? But I guess
I said a few things that maybe Betty wasn’t ready to hear.”

“Such as the
quality of your lovemaking with Twiggy.”

“Yeah, that. Also
a lot of stuff about how I feel she’s been thwarting me and whatnot. Anyway,
she kicked me out and I’m living temporarily over at the office now.” With the
mention of his current accommodations he starts sobbing like a baby. “I miss
the kids,” he keeps saying, and it takes me minute or two of calling out his
name before I can get him back around to our conversation. I tell him I’ve got
an opportunity for him, and the way he’s telling it, an opportunity is exactly
what he needs. I tell him I’m in Acapulco, Mexico, and he likes the sound of
that. I refrain from mentioning that Twiggy is too, which is probably better
for us all. I tell him I’m waist deep in my investigation and may well need
fireworks to get myself out.

“What do you
mean, fireworks?” he says.

“I mean more
fireworks than anybody’s allowed under the bylaws of the Eastern Arizona Fireworks
Association. I’m talking a big truck full of airborne explosives. Billy? I’m
talking Mister Pyrotechnics.”

“I like the
way this is sounding, Willie,” he says, his voice sparking to life again. “I
don’t know what the hell you’re up to, but the way you’re putting it here over
the telephone, Willie, I think this might just be the kind of opportunity I
need.”

“I wouldn’t
call you if it wasn’t, Billy,” I say. “You’re the only man I know who can do
this. How soon can you get down here?”

“I’ll have to
look at a map, man, but I imagine that if I don’t hit traffic I can make it in
twenty four hours.”

“Make it
twenty three,” I say. “I’m in the Hyatt. And just in case, you may as well
bring those pheromones. You never know.”

“That’s right,
Willie,” he says. “You sure as hell don’t. I’ll look forward to seeing you.”

“Me too,
Billy. Drive fast.”

After hanging
up, I hoof it over to El Loco to see if I can find Pepe or the Chief. Lulu may
be in the neighborhood too, and at this point I need all the help I can get.

El Loco,
however, offers no friendly faces. No sign of Pepe or the Chief, and the
hombres I do recognize don’t look too pleased to see yours truly. Kafka hasn’t
exactly endeared us to the population, and I don’t imagine the pesos I took off
some of them endeared me either. I order a beer at the bar and take it out to
the terrace to think through the situation. Soon enough the situation needs
another beer, and I drink it down, studying that plaza for some kind of clue.

Seems like
there are more tourists than locals out there. They come by in big groups,
usually behind a guide with some kind of flag held up in the air. A few college
kids come by too, taking a break from the wet t-shirt contests to explore a bit
of the city. I spot a family of three coming by, a good-looking young couple
and their little girl. They’re over by the fountain, where the girl throws out some
broken crackers, which a few sparrows come hopping up over the cobblestones to
peck. Then the father starts flapping his hands at the girl like they’re sparrow
wings too. She doesn’t want to see it at first, she’s too occupied with those
birds, but after a moment she starts flapping her hands right back, and I
realize that the girl’s deaf and they’re talking. Maybe he’s telling her about Acapulco
or the Mexicans, I don’t know. Maybe he’s asking her what she thinks of this
place that’s so different from home, but it’s mesmerizing to see them talking
this way. I could watch for hours. Makes me wish I could talk with my hands
like that. Makes me wish I could invite them over for an orange juice, maybe,
and sit there listening to the silence together while fluttering our hands
about and sharing all the things we’ve seen down here. I wonder if she’d show
me what fireworks look like when you say them with your hands.

Eventually the
family walks off and the sparrows fly away, and I’m left there with my beer,
back to contemplating the situation again. I’m keeping an eye out on the church of Santa Pulcheria too, although I don’t know that there’s anything still to be
learned from the virgin Lulu. But I’m wondering what kind of debts she racked
up to Queso, and who might win in a heads up game between her and Kafka. Either
way, you couldn’t sell tickets. Then my thoughts are interrupted by an
appearance of the lady herself. She comes from around behind the church, where
Kafka said he caught her smoking. She looks preoccupied as she walks past the
fountain and doesn’t see me sitting there. She appears to be heading off into
town somewhere, and I’m debating following her when another nun comes along
about thirty feet behind. This one’s too tall for her habit, such that you get
a clear glimpse of some shapely calves. Also she’s wearing combat boots, which
does seem unusual, at least until I realize that this nun is Twiggy, taking
advantage of her costume fetish to further our cause. I wonder what they’ll
make of her back at the convent.

Then they’re
gone, and I’m moving from beer to bourbon. Bourbon is for reflecting, I’ve
always felt. With bourbon you can sometimes sneak up on something brilliant.
And then sometimes it just comes. Hits you like a sign. The answer’s so
obvious, I’m amazed I haven’t thought of it already. There’s no doubt that what
I’ve got to do pronto is go up to those cliffs and execute a dive so
spectacular that Queso’s got no choice but to interview me for a permanent
position on the diving team. Learn from a little trick I played back in Vail,
Colorado on a certain Le Mons. I’m thinking maybe a back flip. Hell, I’m
thinking maybe two. I’m thinking acrobatics so spectacular that they could make
even my ex-wife smile.