The Hamlet Warning (4 page)

Chapter 4

Minus
11
Days
,
16
:
39
Hours

Santo Domingo slept during the heat of midday. Shortly after noon, the exact time depending upon whim, most shops closed their doors. The city lay quiet more than two hours, baking in the tropical sun. In mid-afternoon, with the first fresh breezes from the Caribbean, traffic again stirred. By two-thirty or three, most shops were reopened. Narrow Calle El Conde, the main street through the business district, again was crowded. The poor came to stroll along the sidewalks, window-shopping the many boutiques that displayed a dazzling array of wealth tantalizingly close, yet light-years away for those subsisting on 180 pesos a year. The
descamisados
— the shirtless ones — found what satisfaction they could in splurging a few
cheles
on a “New York” chocolate bar or a few Swiss cookies. So ingrained was the pastime of strolling El Conde that a phrase,
darse
un
Condazo
, had become a part of the nation’s language.

A measure of entertainment was offered the poor by the wives and daughters of the
tutumpotes
, who arrived throughout the afternoon in their Mercedes-Benzes and Buicks. Striding firmly into the exclusive shops with heads held high, they tactfully ignored their audience. Their military chauffeurs remained at the curb, guarding the cars, until summoned to carry out the packages.

Later in the afternoon, with temperatures dropped from the nineties to the more reasonable lower eighties, a few American tourists arrived from the hotels to
darse
un
Condazo
, winding their way amidst the poor, the clamoring black-market moneychangers, the pathetically young prostitutes, the heavily armed soldiers, and the professional beggars with their rented, often maimed children.

Not until the relative coolness of early evening did Calle El Conde fully come to life.

Shortly after sundown on the day of the bank robbery, Loomis backed his Olds Regency from the
palacio
garage, wheeled through the gate without stopping, and set out on one of his periodic tours to gauge the mood of the people. The robbery had left him more deeply troubled than he cared to admit to El Jefe, although as yet he had no confirmation of his intuition. He sensed some meaning in Ramón’s move beyond the obvious.

Loomis always had believed that he could detect any brewing political change by a look at the people. In his experience he seldom had been wrong.

He first drove southward, past Parque Independencia, into Ciudad Nueva, a section of lavish homes devoted to a wide variety of architectural styles — mostly Mediterranean, Bermudan, and Spanish colonial. Some gardeners were still at work in the wide expanses of lawns and roses, gardenias, irises, gladioluses, bougainvillea, and other tropical flowers beyond Loomis’s range of knowledge. He left the car windows down, enjoying the mingled aroma of the flowers and of the ocean front a few blocks away. As he drove, he studied the homes. He knew the owners, and had been a guest in many of them. Yet he had never quite felt at ease in such luxury, knowing the desperate poverty of Santo Domingo’s extensive
barrios
. 

He then turned eastward toward the mouth of the Ozama, where, almost five centuries ago, Christopher Columbus once anchored his fleet. Two blocks past the Convent of the Dominics, the first university in the New World, he turned northward to
darse
un
Condazo
with his Olds. He drove slowly, watching the faces of the people.

In the narrow Isabel la Católica, just north of the Biblioteca Nacional, a line of young homosexuals leaned against the centuries-old walls of golden stone, smoothing their long, oily hair, waiting in vain for the aging
turista
norteamericano
who would make them rich. On the streets to the east, Loomis could see the sentinels with submachine guns, blocking the way to the military zone of the fortress. Built in 1505, the place was still in use.

All the faces Loomis saw were controlled, devoid of expression.

At the intersection of El Conde, Loomis turned left and inched through the heavy, two-lane traffic. Ahead of his Olds, a military pickup truck cruised the street, its horn sounding almost constantly as the driver cleared the way. Four soldiers were sitting on the truck bed, legs dangling out the back. Their automatic weapons were pointed carelessly at the crowded sidewalks. The pedestrians pretended not to notice. Occasionally, the soldiers yelled anatomical comment to prostitutes, who did not respond. Gray-clad Dominican marines and drab-green uniformed
Policía
nacional
guarded each intersection. They saluted and waved Loomis through.

At the corner of Santome, Loomis braked. A white Mazda was stopped at the curb. A hand reached out from the open car window and seized the wrist of a young prostitute. She was struggling, but the hand pulled her toward the car. The crowd around her stepped back, watching silently. The soldiers did not intervene. The police document on the windshield of the Mazda identified the young hippie-hoodlums as members of
La
Banda
, responsible for thousands of beatings, robberies, kidnapings, and political murders in recent years — all with sanction of high police protection. Members of
La
Banda
were kissing cousins of the fascist
paleros
of the Trujillo era and of the
tontons
macoutes
of Papa Doc Duvalier. The driver wore an Apache headband. The hoodlum wrestling with the girl wore a floppy black hat. He was pulling her into the car through the open window.

Loomis stepped from the Olds. “
Hola
!
Un
momento
,” he called to the one in the floppy hat.

“
Ten
cuidado
,
señor
” a sergeant of the
Policía
nacional
said at his elbow. “Be careful. That’s Franco Loco. Crazy Frank.”

Franco Loco was known for his abilities with a 9-mm parabellum.

Loomis slammed the door of the Olds and moved forward. Crazy Frank turned, saw Loomis, and released the frantic girl. Still facing Loomis, he laughed and said something to the driver. With a screech of tires, the car sped away. The girl glanced at Loomis, then hurried into the crowd and disappeared. Loomis was left encircled by wooden-faced Dominicans, who stared at him without comment.

Loomis returned to the Olds. He drove on west. Circling Parque Independencia, he turned northward, into the
barrio
of San Carlos de Tenerife. Driving slowly around a block, he monitored his rear-view mirrors carefully. He then parked and sat, lights out, on a side street to watch his back trail. As darkness closed around him, he could hear a pig rooting in the yard behind a nearby clapboard shack. A baby was crying somewhere. A goat bleated from farther up the block. Twice Loomis heard rats scurrying in the trash along the gutter.

His tour of the city had left him deeply disturbed. The tension, the smoldering anger of the people were increasing every day. His worst fears had been confirmed. Santo Domingo was a pressure cooker, ready to explode under the strain of constant seething resentment.

After twenty minutes, Loomis was convinced he had not been followed. He fired up the motor and drove fast out the Duarte Highway to the north.

More than an hour later, well into the plantation country, he slowed as he spotted the marker he sought, then whipped the car off the highway into a narrow dirt road. For a time he sped between fields of tall, sweet-smelling sugar cane, his tires purring in the soft earth. He drove until the road came to a dead end, stopped, and switched off the lights.

He sat motionless in the darkness for more than five minutes before a shadow emerged from the cane field and approached the car. Loomis placed his Colt’s Python in his lap, turned on a faint dash light, and tapped the button that released the door catches. Richard Allen Johnson slid in and closed the door. Loomis pushed the button again, throwing all the latches.

“Hello, shithead,” he said.

“I’ll sure say one thing for you, Loomis,” Johnson said. “You really know a remote rendezvous when you see one.” He saw the pistol in Loomis’s lap. “Well, honk if you love Jesus! Don’t tell me you think I’ve taken up that old contract on you!”

“How in hell would I know?” Loomis said. “It’s been damned near fifteen years since I’ve seen you. People change.”

“Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, you seem like the same old asshole to me,” Johnson said.

“I can’t see that Washington duty has given
you
any polish,” Loomis said. “Are you certain you lost my man?”

“Three blocks from the hotel,” Johnson said. “I sure hope he can find his way back all right. And you don’t have to worry. I’ve got three men out there. No one will interrupt us.” 

Same Johnson. Cocky, overconfident, impatient, completely fearless, a 225-pound bundle of nervous energy constantly threatening to erupt. A man who lived for danger. Johnson had weathered the years well. In the dim light, Loomis could see patches of gray in the hairline over his temples, but his body apparently was as lean and tough as it had been in the late fifties when he made All-America as a halfback at Ohio State, or in the sixties when he and Loomis were laying waste in Southeast Asia. Loomis had not expected to see him again. They once were the best team in the Far East. Loomis had assumed those days were gone forever.

“You’re risking your health and mine,” Loomis said. “I hope you’ve got a good reason.”

“The best,” Johnson said. “I’m what’s so popularly in demand these days: a man with a message. And here’s the message: you are in a unique position to perform a very valuable service for your country.”

“I hate to sound crass,” Loomis said. “But what’s my country done for me lately outside of trying to kill me?”

Johnson sighed. “I tried to tell them that’d be your attitude. Not a bone of forgiveness in his whole body, I told them. No sense of charity whatsoever. So they have empowered me to offer you a proposition. You play along with us on a little project, and we’ll see that those old charges against you are wiped off the books. Full restoration of citizenship. Clean files.”

Loomis had learned, long ago, to hide his true feelings. For years, he’d accepted the fact that he probably would never be able to go home again. Johnson’s offer awakened thoughts, images he’d long blocked from his mind. But as these thoughts came, they were shackled to another: nobody offers something for nothing.

Loomis waited until he was certain he could keep his voice level. “Who’s ‘we’?” he asked.

“Consider who could make that offer,” Johnson said. “Then you’ll begin to get some idea of what’s involved.” 

“I have. But who sent you? Are you here representing the company?”

“I really don’t know,” Johnson said. “And I’m not being evasive. It started out as one thing and evolved into another. There’s an awful lot of people connected with it now.”

Loomis believed him. But it wasn’t enough. “I have no guarantee, then?”

“Oh good Lord, Loomis! Is there ever, in our kind of life? But this obviously comes from the top. And I personally think it’s a very generous offer. After all, you killed two of the company’s best men.”

Loomis couldn’t control a sudden surge of anger. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? Apologize?”

Johnson turned in the seat to face him. “Listen, Loomis. I’ll level with you for old time’s sake. There’s something big afoot. I don’t know what it is. But it involves you and this flea-bitten country. I think you’d be damned foolish not to take advantage of it. That’s my personal opinion. But they gave me a long, prepared script. Want to hear it?”

“Why not?” Loomis said. “It’s your show.”

“O.K. Here it is: I spent some time in your old home town last week. You probably wouldn’t recognize it. The Interstate cuts through the west edge, and the house where your maternal grandparents lived is gone. The house you grew up in on the ranch is still standing, but no one has lived in it since your dad died. It’s deteriorating rapidly. Your high-school sweetheart is married to a rancher and has a daughter seventeen that looks a lot like she did at that age, if her high-school graduation picture was a good likeness.”

Loomis knew that the monologue was calculated to stun him emotionally.

It did.

“The superhighway has put San Antone twenty minutes away, and most people now go there to shop,” Johnson went on. “Half the stores along Main Street are closed, and the windows of most are boarded up. Your old home town is practically a ghost town. The drugstore’s still open, but they’ve taken the soda fountain out, so I doubt if you could get your old job back. The movie theater closed in sixty-eight. Your Uncle Pete stores hay in it. And incidentally, he’s doing real well. He’s what? Eighty-two now? The ranch seems in good shape. He pastures about four hundred head of cattle on it — red cattle with white faces and no horns, I forget what the fuck they’re called.”