The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (97 page)

Beaufrey was always bragging about the work of his friends in the U.S. CIA. Beaufrey claimed the abundance of cocaine in the United States had been planned by U.S. strategists who were concerned that heroin users in ghettos would not spread the HIV infection fast enough. Beaufrey always had to have the last word. Serlo had heard the stories about the U.S. CIA, but he doubted very much the U.S. CIA had been so well coordinated. It had only been a lucky coincidence that cheap, abundant cocaine had appeared when HIV did. Running cocaine against heroin had been a long shot, but the U.S. CIA had had little choice. The CIA’s Company had lost billions of dollars in opium revenue after Saigon fell. The cocaine had been part of a deliberate plan to finance CIA operations in Mexico and Central America with the proceeds from cocaine sales in
the United States. Without cocaine, the millions of young black and Hispanic men and women confined to ghettos in U.S. cities would riot. Without a cheap, abundant supply of cocaine, it would be “Burn, baby, burn!” all over again as it had been in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Miami. Secretly, Beaufrey did not believe the rioting natives of the earth would have enough energy or ambition to overrun it. Uprisings and revolts always petered out after the revolutionists and their followers started watching television and had a little more to eat.

To call England or the United States a “democracy” was a big joke because in neither country did the citizens bother any longer to vote. What did it matter? Both governments had secret agendas and employed “private contractors” such as Beaufrey, while their stupid citizens muddled along in terror of new taxes. Monarchy had many advantages over corrupt elected officials; in noble family lineages, accountability extended even to the monarch. No lineage dare allow even their monarch to abuse his divine office, otherwise they might all be ruined by popular unrest, even civil war. The masses, the common folk, desperately wanted a monarch; one had only to look at the United States, where presidents and their families were embraced by the citizens as quasi-royalty. The lowly gray masses of England had paid and paid billions over the years to retain their beloved royal family. There was a strict biological order to the natural world; in this natural order, only
sangre pura
sufficed to command instinctive obedience from the masses.

IN ORDER TO CONTROL the mare it was necessary to pull her head sharply to one side, pulling her into a tight circle that gradually slowed the mare to a walk again. David found the speed and danger exhilarating. He refused to try another horse and was bored at the slow pace Beaufrey and Serlo kept on their huge Dutch geldings. Serlo and Beaufrey sometimes performed dressage exercises as they rode along to illustrate obscure refinements. Absolute obedience, and absolute control. David could not resist making tasteless remarks about man and horses “becoming one” and other stupid sexual innuendos. The mare sensed
David’s impatience with the slow pace, and she had begun to prance nervously and toss her head, rattling the bits against her teeth. The clatter of the steel against her teeth set Serlo’s nerves on edge.

Beaufrey could see Serlo was offended by everything David did or said. David was a darling in that regard. David was entirely predictable. Beaufrey had even guessed which horse David would choose. Beaufrey enjoyed riding between Serlo and David to feel the tension as it grew and grew until the little mare was prancing and even the Dutch gelding Beaufrey rode became restless and steadily more agitated by the antics of David’s mare. But before long David got tired of fighting to rein in the mare; and abruptly, without a word, David had let the reins go slack. The mare half-reared and took off with David like a rocket, leaving Serlo and Beaufrey behind in a cloud of dust.

Serlo thought it was really quite funny. He liked to look at David and smile because David would misread everything, blinded by egotism. David was expecting Serlo to make a big play for his body soon. They were sitting on a long dark leather couch in the
sala,
which opened into a center ballroom with a thirty-foot ceiling. With David, perhaps Serlo could teach Beaufrey a lesson about the common street trade. David’s photographs were not art, they were disgusting pornography no different from Beaufrey’s loathsome videotapes. Maybe all gringos were as dull witted as David. Sometimes Serlo wondered. The Texas boy Eric, he had been the same. Toys, little trifles, those boys had been punks. David never even suspected Beaufrey had arranged the kidnapping. Serlo had not asked Beaufrey about the child. He had perfected indifference to Beaufrey’s weird fixations. Serlo was not curious about the fate of insignificant beings; he had not felt the thrill Beaufrey felt watching Eric, David, and Seese waltz one another closer to suicide.

The rooms were full of a rich, diffuse light from the tall windows. Long porches shaded the rooms from the bright burning sun. Beyond the yellow-blossoming trees, the plains flattened away in every direction until the light blue of the sky folded over them. There were no other tall trees in sight on the
llano,
only shrubs. Bees and large black flies browsed in the trees’ blossoms. Huge black flies clung to the window screens and did not move even when the wind caused the screen to flex in and out. Serlo spoke softly.

“Down here, the hottest months are July and August. You look out these windows, and the heat is so thick it quivers—” David had a lens brush and was making delicate sweeps across the face of the telephoto lens. David did not respond. Serlo was forced to finish: “Like quicksand.”
David smiled because he had forced those last words from Serlo.

“Quicksand?” David wondered. David did not think of heat as quicksand, but he knew there were people who were like quicksand. David was not as sure about Beaufrey now; he took trips alone to Bogotá and refused to allow David to accompany him. David had intended to fly to San Diego, to stay there until he located where Seese had hidden Monte. But Beaufrey’s unexpected trips to Bogotá had worried David. David did not believe Beaufrey’s story that Serlo was asexual, and he did not believe Beaufrey was flying to Bogotá to sell videos either. Beaufrey’s eye had strayed from Eric to David; David was determined not to let anyone or anything come between himself and Beaufrey. All of his life David had imagined an older man like Beaufrey—rich, aristocratic, and ruthless; someone who would be his patron, so that David would be invited to shows all across Europe.

Eric had accused David of being heartless like Beaufrey. At the time, David had said nothing, but he had been pleased with the comparison. Eric had cried too often, and the dampness on his cheeks and the down-turned corners of his mouth had nearly driven David insane with the compulsion to smash the crybaby’s face to bloody pulp. The dampness and moisture of Seese after the baby was born had also disgusted David. The morning David had left Seese, the last morning they had been together, David had pulled the sheets off the bed, screaming at Seese—not even words, only sounds—screaming his rage, rage over the stickiness of the bed sheets from the humidity, rage at the odor and pale-yellow stains of milk that leaked at night from her nipples while she nursed the infant in bed with her.

Even after David had taken Monte away to Cartagena, David had felt revulsion when the baby had spit up on the edge of the blanket as he held him. The nannies had been instructed to dress the baby freshly before they brought him to his father. At first David had taken many rolls of film of the baby for comparison with David’s own baby pictures, which his mother had mounted in the blue leather baby books she had kept for him. David still got tears in his eyes when he thought about his mother dying. If his mother had been alive, she would have been delighted to see how much the baby looked like him. David had spent a great deal of time alone with his mother because his sister and brother had already been in school when David was born. His father had been an accountant who used to leave for his office then vanished on a three-day drunk.

David had been careful to keep all his mother’s family albums; she
had taught him to look at photographs of all the family branches and to identify certain family characteristics in the eyes, cheekbones, or postures. David remembered his father as a silent, angry man whose thinning gray hair stood on end when he was drunk. David had been happiest as a child on the nights when the old man did not come home. The photographs in the albums had been their favorite pastime to share—far from phone calls from police who had found his father passed out in his car. After David’s sister and brother graduated and left home, the albums of photographs had been the best and most real part of his mother’s life, except for David. David was her very soul, she said; without him she would simply have died. She had her gin and tonic in the morning after David went to school.

DAVID HAD WANTED Serlo to notice him; David enjoyed the charged atmosphere of sexual tension that had developed between the three of them. Beaufrey claimed Serlo was asexual; who could blame Serlo when Beaufrey refused to uncover his body? Beaufrey always had sex in silk pajamas or the clothes he was wearing. Beaufrey did not allow himself to be seen
or
embraced
or
touched. He ignored his partners. “On rainy days we wear our raincoats” had been Beaufrey’s standard line about condoms. He had such potent sensitivity he was able to wear one over another for added safety. Beaufrey said he knew too much about secret biological research and the use of sexual transmission. HIV had only been the beginning.

David had been prepared to return to San Diego to make things happen, to have the bitch beaten until she revealed where Monte was hidden, when G. had called; new lawsuits over the photographs of Eric’s suicide had been filed against G., the gallery, and of course David. Fortunately David and the negatives and the color transparencies were not in the United States. G. reminded David he had warned him about the risk of a lawsuit involved with the Eric photography series; but at the time, David had been confident Eric’s family wanted no further publicity or embarrassment. The lawsuit, filed by Eric’s parents, asked
millions of dollars in punitive damages. Of course G. could no longer sell David’s prints in the United States, but G. had already made arrangements with a gallery in Munich.

G. kept telling David not to worry, not to worry, the publicity was worth millions and millions. G. was handling everything. David need not worry. But David had been angry about the attorney’s fees. G. was charging David’s account thousands per month for attorneys. Prints of Eric’s suicide were selling briskly, but David’s share had been consumed by payments to lawyers. David was furious. He had waited years and years for this success to come; Eric’s family and their lawsuits had ruined everything. G. said not to worry, but that was because G. knew there was little chance of losing David to a rival gallery after controversy and lawsuits. Of course the “Eric series” would still be sold abroad and to private collectors, but naturally lawsuits cast shadows over anticipated profits. G. was optimistic about David’s next show; how was the new series progressing? “Great,” David had lied. There was no new series. Why should there be? David had just created a brilliant series. The Eric series was his masterpiece, and the show had been a huge success until the shitbag lawyer’s bills came in the mail. David blamed G. for mishandling the entire situation. He did not trust G. or G.’s bookkeeper either; just like that $100,000 was gone. Now G. had condescended to lend David $5,000, but he wanted more prints from the Eric series sent air express before G. would wire the cash.

David slammed down the telephone receiver. He felt tears in his eyes. G. had mismanaged the show and sale of his best new work. Hysteria and prejudice had turned the art critics against David. None of them understood how important the Eric series was; none of them realized David’s work was about to redefine the terms
portrait
and
still life.
G. had been too anxious to sell sets of the Eric series before further lawsuits were filed by Eric’s family. G.’s attorneys were his old school chums as well, and they had backed down in the face of a team of top-rate lawyers the Texans had hired. Suddenly it was as if all the work David had done to create the Eric series had been destroyed, because all the sets of limited-edition prints had been sold and less than $10,000 remained after the lawyers had been paid. G. talked vaguely about a gallery abroad where the effects of the U.S. lawsuits would not interfere. After that, what was the point of work?