The Laughing Falcon (29 page)

“I feel awful – I didn’t get y’all anything.” She unwrapped a vial of perfume: L’Eau d’Issey; it was apparently a fragrance Glo favoured, because she looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“You were wearing it on December the seventeenth,” Halcón said.

The day of the kidnapping. Maggie was confounded by Halcón’s apparent expertise in perfume until it came to her they had likely found the vial in Glo’s cosmetic bag at the lodge. Halcón presented Maggie with a bulkier parcel, and when she
unwrapped it she was taken aback by his prescience: it was the perfect gift,
Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica
. She grasped it to her chest, chirruping her thanks, feeling ridiculous.

Glo was gracious but formal, thanking them, shaking their hands. Maggie followed suit, dropping her eyes as Halcón’s hand grasped hers. The occasion seemed to demand a more demonstrative reply. “I’ll make a special Christmas dinner. I’ll do those chickens. I know a recipe for stuffing with rice and – we don’t have peaches; we’ll use papayas.”

Halcón spread out an array of women’s clothing. “I was too bashful to ask for your measurements, so I hope they fit.” Several garments still had store labels affixed to them: simple unpatterned skirts and shirts and shorts and undies and pairs of flip-flops. Jericho had also brought a mosquito net: Glo, on the breezeless side of the house, had complained of bites.

“Did we awake you last night?” Halcón asked Maggie.

She felt he would detect too bold a lie. “Yes, I heard a car pull in.”

“A friend who is assisting us. I will talk to you about this later.”

He was called away to unlock the door for Zorro, who marched in with an empty clothesbasket, looking sour and truculent.

“Attention, class.” Buho clapped his hands. “Lesson begins in five minutes. Today we will study irregular verbs.”

Refusing all offers of help, Maggie toiled alone in the kitchen that afternoon. In addition to stuffing, there would be carrots, potatoes, yams, a fruit salad – a thimble of brandy to add zest – and cheesecake for dessert.

She looked up from her chores to see Halcón and Glo outside her window, returning from the walk he had promised. Glo beckoned him to join her at a table, where she picked up his deck of cards and began shuffling them. “I heard you play a little ‘jack, Hal.”

He sat across from her and she spun some cards in his direction. Halcón seemed surprised at Glo’s adeptness; she had confided in Maggie that in Las Vegas, between dance productions, she had dealt a lot of ‘jack, as she put it. She had spent eight years in nightclubs and casinos.

“Hit me,” Halcón said.

Glo flipped him a Card. “You’re busted, honey.”

“That card did not come from the top of the deck.”

“I’m out of practice.”

Maggie was pleased to see their truce had firmly taken hold. Halcón looked up to her window and smiled, as if sharing a silent confidence.

She turned to see Zorro sidling into the kitchen. He was the glitch in an otherwise agreeable day, with his constant tippling of brandy — the bottle was down by four inches. Now he was reaching again for it.

“Zorro, get away from there.” She was unafraid to boss him; he knew she had Halcón’s ear.

“Un pequeñito.”
He poured not a little one, but a good two ounces. His eyes seemed glazed; he departed with a weaving gait.

She hid the bottle in an alcove by the window. Zorro was temperamental even when sober; drunk, he could become unstable. She was about to call upon Halcón to deal with the problem, but he and Glo had wandered to the banana grove, where he was severing a stalk with his machete.

Maggie watched as Zorro climbed into a hammock with his drink and a comic book he had found,
Escape from Planet Xenith
. He promptly fell asleep. Maggie relaxed. Halcón, hefting the bananas, led Glo to the door, where they hung them from a rafter. Tayra was snoring peacefully. Buho was strumming carols on his guitar. In an almost surreal way, it was beginning to seem a lot like Christmas.

Dinner was delayed until after the television news: the search for the terrorists and their captives had been extended to the
Panama border area. Halcón appeared skeptical – he was suspicious of everything that emanated from Operación Libertad. With little fresh to report, the major news feature was an interview with the infamous Slack Cardinal at the Mono Titi Tours office. He seemed slightly bruised, was wincing.

“Señor Cardinal was attacked on the streets of Quepos by four men,” Buho explained. “An employee came to his aid. All four of the attackers were taken to hospital.”

At one point Cardinal responded in English, “I know who loosed those fascist goons on me, and I’m going to break his … neck.” Halcón laughed as the penultimate word, an adjective, was bleeped.

After the news, they sat around a laden dinner table decorated with flowers. Maggie’s cuisine was greeted with toasts and compliments from all but Zorro, who avoided conversation, sitting stiffly in his chair, his eyes eerily blank. After two glasses of wine, Maggie, too, was feeling a light-headedness, complicated by the closeness of Halcón sitting beside her.

There was little conversation at first. Buho kept glancing shyly at Glo, who picked at her plate and was unusually quiet. Tayra was keeping a sharp eye on her tipsy husband. To fill the silence, Maggie began a spirited reminiscence of the prairies in winter: skating on the lake, snowball fights with her brothers, tunnelling into snow forts. Tayra seemed fascinated — she had never seen snow.

“About all it’s good for is skiing,” said Glo, who had spent her winter off-days at Tahoe.

Halcón had skied in the Andes. “It is majestic in those mountains. I will very soon return.” Maggie wondered if he kept a retreat there.

Zorro finally spoke, volunteering to deliver the plates prepared for Coyote. He had difficulty rising and almost spilled the platter as Halcón ushered him out. Tayra watched him with half-veiled eyes.

A few minutes later, after Maggie returned to the kitchen to grind the coffee, she discovered that the brandy had disappeared from the alcove by the window ledge.

When Halcón answered her summons to join her, she told him of Zorro’s heavy tippling. “He has a gun. Why on earth did you give it back to him?”

“A gesture to save his pride, maybe a foolish one. I warned him he must keep it in the holster.”

“How well do you know him?”

“Two months.”

“My Lord, is that all?”

“I did not meet these comrades before then, until my return from exile in Cuba.” Halcón had mobilized them very quickly.

They called Tayra over. The news was not good: “He gets bad when he has a few drinks.”

After waiting for Zorro for twenty minutes, Halcón dispatched Buho to search for him. Maggie could not understand why Halcón hadn’t gone to the gun closet to arm himself or why he did not seem overly concerned.

Halcón drew Maggie off to his room, which was cluttered, clothes hanging from a chair by an unmade bed, a filled ashtray on a chair. She itched to tidy it up.

“I sense you are opposed, but I have decided to make contact with this man Cardinal.”

Maggie brushed some lint from the bedsheet and tightened it. She was not sure how to react. It must have stood well with Halcón that Cardinal had warded off an attack by the so-called fascist goons – he had seen his own mother raped by such men.

“You will laugh, but I think our meeting is preordained.”

Maggie flicked a brown leaf from the bed; it took wing, a butterfly, a perfect imitation, a pretender like Halcón and Cardinal.

“Naturally, our friend who came last night will check him out.”

Halcón’s attention was now drawn outside: Buho was approaching, walking backwards, each of his hands raised slightly. From the shadows came the swaying figure of Zorro, talking rapidly.

Maggie quickly followed Halcón out to the main room. Glo had already moved a few cautious steps upstairs, and Maggie considered following her, but something about the scene held her where she was. It did not seem that Buho was being threatened. As the men came into the light from the windows, she could see that Zorro was pointing his gun not at Buho but at his own head.

They paused by a window — behind which Tayra was standing, looking appalled. Maggie could make little sense from Zorro’s rush of words, delivered in theatrical tones. He seemed to be tabulating a list of grievances.

Halcón, looking more annoyed than concerned, stood at the open door while Buho slipped back inside. “He wants her to be kinder to him or he will kill himself,” he explained. “I don’t think it is too serious.”

Now Tayra was responding, softly at first, then with more emotion, and as their dialogue continued for several minutes both of them began to vent tears. Abruptly, she rushed outside, her arms outstretched, and embraced him. As Zorro hugged her in return, Halcón carefully disengaged the gun from his hand.

“You have to understand,” Buho said. “They are very much in love.”

Maggie was touched; there was a wonky tenderness to this scene, two Nicaraguan warriors clutching and crying while being led into the house.

They had met, Buho said, on the field of battle. “She was with the Sandinistas; he was a Contra. Afterwards, he was her prisoner, and love bloomed and he saw the light and joined the great cause for social justice.”

“Gag me,” Glo said, and ascended to her room.

Halcón was in a prickly mood as he joined Maggie to seek her counsel. He was determined to banish Zorro to the guard tower, to relieve Coyote. Maggie told him to forgo any reprimands until tomorrow.

“They are husband and wife, for God’s sake, Halcón. They haven’t shared a bed for a long time, and they need a night of closeness.”

“That is a reward for bad behaviour.”

Not far away, the couple were whispering and holding hands. Maggie continued to speak bluntly. “A night together might relax him, then we’d all feel more comfortable. I’m sure Tayra would welcome it. Look at it as a Christmas present. Keep the troops happy.”

He nodded. “I have your point.”

“Glo has a double bed; I’ll sleep with her.”

“It is Gloria-May Walker you prefer to sleep with?” He strolled off, leaving Maggie to work through the implications of that unnerving question.

Maggie and Glo faced each other on the bed, their legs curled under them, a flickering candle between them. Maggie wore a long T-shirt, but Glo only panties, the brownness of her limbs in startling contrast to her white torso. She was frowning over Maggie’s notebook: the passages recounting Halcón’s dramatic history.

“You sure he’s not setting up scenes to make himself look good in your book?”

“I can’t believe he’s that conniving.” He might have dressed up his tales, but it was no great human error to want to be immortalized: a Garibaldi, a Robin Hood, a Scarlet Pimpernel; he was engineering a great escapade.

“You’re blind, honey. The Throb stole your poke, stole your ass, and now he’s snaffled your heart.”

“That is
not
happening. Yes, I do admire him. He’s a man who rose above childhood pain. Sure he’s a renegade, but he’s
interesting and vital; he’s a natural leader, unafraid to consult.”

“Yeah, right. Just remember to keep your panties dry when you’re consulting, you hear? Or riding horsy on his shoulders.”

“I’m
totally
in control.” She sought a change of subject. “He’s going to sentence Zorro to the guardhouse for the next month.”

“Next
month?”
Glo groaned.

“I think the negotiations to get us out of here will take some time. But at least they’re going to start. That Jericho character, their outside man or inside, or whatever, is going to make contact with Slack Cardinal.”

“Does Halcón tell you
everything?
With Zorro out of here, what’s that make you? Second in command, I reckon. I hope you haven’t said anything to him about the kayak man.”

“Of course not.” Maggie watched a moth, a mimic with eyeballs on its wings, flutter outside the mosquito net. From her own room, across the hall, came the sound of a squeaking bed.

“That should keep him from slobbering at the bathroom window for a while,” Glo said.

“Oh, Tayra has him under her thumb. He’s actually just a harmless bag of bluster. She pretends to be a hard-boiled radical, but she’s just a pussycat underneath, too.”

“Yeah, I guess if you have to be kidnapped by someone, why not the good folks from Cinco de Mayo. We treat our hostages right.”

“I’m worried less about us than them. If it comes down to some violent stand-off against a SWAT team, God, these poor …” She faded out because Glo was frowning and shaking her head. “What’s the matter?”

“Chester’s attitude will be, let’s blast these assholes off the face of the earth. If he has his way, that’s what he’ll do, and Chester is used to having his way.”

That cast a spell of gloom. Maggie watched a firefly crawl along the netting, blinking green and white. The sounds from the next room had subsided.

“They should just pay these people something and send them off to Cuba,” she said.

“Chester’s too ornery to do that.”

In that case, Maggie decided, she must get word out that the kidnappers were well meaning; they must not be harmed. Maybe the key was Jacques Cardinal – Halcón must be persuaded to let her talk to him, to demand assurances.

But Glo offered a grim scenario: “It’ll be too late. They’ll follow Cardinal out here. This place has huge windows, there’s nowhere to hide. They’ll have floodlights. They’ll have about ten sharpshooters; they’ll each have a target and orders to kill.”

“Gloria-May! For God’s sake, don’t talk that way. We’re
not
going to let anyone get hurt.”

“Snipers — that’s how Chester will do it. I know how he thinks; I’ve been married to him too long.”

Her last sentence hung in the air for a few moments. She looked so sad and beautiful, the candlelight playing on her breasts.

“Too long, Glo?”

“You know what I mean. Hey I love him; we’re just on different wavelengths.” That seemed an understatement: she had loathed the politico-military world into which marriage had plunged her, had expressed herself as hating every second of her two years in Washington.