09-Twelve Mile Limit (32 page)

That night, we showered together and dressed in our best clothes for dinner. Amelia wore a sleek beige dress that showed her body, made her look even taller, and left no doubt that she was braless, too. “When I’m outside the country,” she laughed, “I always take the opportunity to show what little I have.”

I wore khaki slacks, a Navy polo shirt, a light, silk sports coat I’d had tailored in Asia, and my old, soft jungle boots—which earned me a minor rebuke. “Just when I think you’re halfway civilized, you prove me wrong.”

I told her Colombia wasn’t a particularly civilized country, and she smiled as if I were joking.

We walked the cobblestone streets west toward the Hotel de Acension, Hassan’s hangout and sometime home. I didn’t tell Amelia why we were going there, just that I’d eaten in the restaurant and the food was very good. Nor did I tell her why I asked to have my new briefcase kept in the hotel safe.

It was a typical December night in Cartagena. A jungle breeze came off the water carrying aromatic little pockets of open sea, of jasmine and frangipani blossom, and of the city, too. It smelled of water on rock and diesel exhaust, of wood smoke and the shadowed musk of narrow alleys, and of cobblestone markets that hadn’t missed a night in three hundred years.

Once Amelia hugged herself close to me, and said, “I love it here. We’ll have to come back just to have fun. I feel so … relaxed.”

Already, it seemed very comfortable to speak of us as “we,” two people but one united couple.

I, however, did not feel relaxed. We were on our way—hopefully—to meet a man that I was now duty-bound to murder.

Earl Stallings was in the bar. I saw him when we walked through the great stone archway that was the entrance into the Hotel de Acension. The bar was to the left, elevated above the marble lobby. Wrought-iron tables were crowded, people drinking and laughing, ceiling fans above stirring slow mare’s-tails of smoke, while a very black man at a very black grand piano played and sang “Jamaica Farewell” in Spanish.

“My heart is down, my head is spinning around, I had to leave my little girl in Kingston town …”

Stallings stood beside the piano, dressed in white linen slacks and a white guyaberra shirt, smoking a cigar. Clinging to his waist was a woman wearing a purple blouse and a white Panama hat.

Shanay Money had been correct. Stallings made her giant of a father appear small. He dwarfed the piano and dominated the room. His head was huge, pumpkin-sized, and even from that distance I could see the yellow smoothness of a burn scar on the right side of his face. He appeared to be Polynesian, possibly Fijian or Samoan, and he had to weigh well over four hundred pounds.

“Doc, what’s wrong? What are you staring at?”

I realized that Amelia was pulling me by the hand toward the restaurant, while I stood there taking him in, memorizing his features.

I said, “It’s somebody I think I know. Let’s get a table, and I’ll come back and say hello to the guy.”

The restaurant was in a smaller courtyard separated from a larger courtyard by palms and hibiscus in red and yellow bloom. From our table, I could see the moon through the feathered leaves, above the stone gables of the hotel.

Amelia took my left hand in both her hands and said, “Hey pal, we haven’t known each other that long. I want to learn everything there is to know about you, all your moods, what makes you mad, everything, but I haven’t had time. I want to. I will. The point is, I get the feeling that something happened this afternoon, that there’s something wrong. Did I say something that offended you? Sometimes I talk before I think. You seem so distracted.”

I kissed her hands, smiling. “No, I think you’re wonderful. I mean that, Amelia. I’m a little preoccupied, thinking about how to get information on Janet and the others.”

“You said you might know some people who can help.”

“Maybe. That guy in the bar. I need to talk to him after we order. Alone.”

Earl Stallings blew smoke toward the ceiling fan before he looked down at me, and lied, “Kazan? Kazan … hmm. No, I’ve never heard of a man named Hassan Kazan. And if I had, why should I tell you?”

I’d introduced myself to him at the piano and endured his domineering handshake. Then I endured him saying, “I saw that redhead you’re with. Kind of attractive. I’ve never slept with a redhead. They any good?”

Now we were standing in a quiet corner of the bar, him with a tall brown drink in hand, me with a bottle of Aquila beer in a brown bottle.

I said, “I’m surprised you don’t know Hassan Kazan. He stays at this hotel regularly. That’s what my friends tell me, anyway.”

Stallings seemed to swell slightly. “You interrupt my evening, I don’t even know who the hell you are, and already you’re calling me a liar?”

His voice had a mellow, raspy quality that I associate with Hawaiians, but his English was occasionally clipped, guttural in a way that suggested Austronesian languages. I forced myself to smile congenially while my brain struggled to remember a few of the Samoan phrases I knew. Laega, laega—didn’t that mean “sorry”?

I couldn’t remember for certain, and then I decided, screw it, I wasn’t going to bother trying to charm him. I said, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m calling you. A liar. I’ve got a business proposition for Kazan. Maybe for you, too. But I’m not going to stand here and let you waste my time.”

For a moment, I thought he was going to swing at me, smash the glass into my face, or maybe pull a knife. I watched his face blanch, then freeze masklike as he reconsidered. Stallings was used to bullying people, and bullies rarely have to use any force stronger than words. It was a struggle, but he got his temper under control. “If I’m included in your business, that might be different. Money. If there’s money involved, I’m interested. You have American cash with you? Here in Cartagena? How much are we talking?”

I had brought a sizeable bundle of cash—about $5,000—but I doubted if that were enough to tempt someone like Stallings. So I said, “All I could bring in legally, plus I have access to a little more, depending on how our negotiations go.”

“You’re going to need a lot more than that, but, okay, it’s a place to begin. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

A reasonable man—if cash were involved.

I said, “I wasn’t thinking, Earl. Sorry. So let me start all over again. I want to discuss something that could make you both a profit. Sizable money and very simple. So the question’s the same: Where’s Kazan?”

“No, no, no, Ford. The question is: What kind of business are we discussing?”

I said, “I think three friends of mine are being held captive somewhere in Colombia. I’m here to buy their freedom.”

“How would I know anything about that? Now you’re saying I’m a criminal, too.”

“I know because they were adrift in the water the morning you ran the shrimp boat Nan-Shan into the Ten Thousand Islands. I know you saw them and stopped.”

He did a good job of trying to hide his surprise. When he started to reply with a predictable lie, I held up a warning finger. “No more of your bullshit. I’m going to have dinner now. Think it over. Find your pal Hassan Kazan and meet me at that little restaurant, La Habinita. No … make it Plaza de Santa Domingo.” I looked at my watch. “Let’s say eleven.”

Stallings wasn’t used to being on the defensive, but he was already regrouping. “I’ll meet you—but not so early. Let’s say midnight.” He nodded toward the woman with the purple blouse and Panama hat as he grinned, his incisor teeth gigantic, the color of yellow ivory. “I hired her for the evening. I want to make sure I get my money’s worth.”

As I left the bar and was walking through the hotel’s marble lobby, a tiny Arabic-looking man in a dingy white suit, his black hair pasted smooth, stopped me. He had a normal head, but his hands and his legs were dwarf-like. He was obviously very nervous, sweat beaded on his face, and his head swiveled constantly in a way that reminded me of a pigeon that has just heard a hawk. He was smoking a cigarette in a short black holder, and he took the cigarette from his mouth when he had my attention, and said with a Pakistani accent, “Seńor, if I may be so bold as to offer you a warning. The man you were speaking with in the bar, do you know who he is? What he does?”

He was a humorous caricature of the sort of person one often meets in smuggler ports in the earth’s darker places. They make a living off the scraps of larger predators, but I did not smile. “Why do you ask?”

“Because he is a very dangerous man. Extremely dangerous. And he has many dangerous friends. If you are here to purchase something—anything—I am a much better choice. Emeralds? Gold? Women? Whatever you want, even items I have not named. I’ll leave those words for you to use.” He touched a finger to one side of his nose and sniffed to illustrate. “I’ll guarantee you fair market value, and I am not nearly so dangerous.”

I told him I’d think it over, maybe another time. As I was walking away, he called after me, “In the jungles here, there are still savages! On the street, as well. Trust no one!”

Back at our hotel, Amelia stripped the beige dress up over her head, draped it on a chair, and walked on long legs, pelvis rotating, through the wedge of light that came through the doorway. Then she stood beside the bed in silken bikini underwear, her nipples very dark on the white, white skin of her breasts, and she said, “Every time I see your body naked, I love it even more.”

I folded my hands behind my head, and said, “Same here, lady. I’m getting to be a very serious fan of yours.”

She laughed as she lay down beside me, her fingers already encircled around me, moving on me, eager for me to be ready, and she said, “Yes, you do seem to be a fan, right there for the world to see. No denying it.”

We made love quickly, both of us too eager and needy to attempt to slow ourselves, losing ourselves in a physical unity of belly-slapping, groaning, laughing without inhibition.

Then we held each other, saying private, silly things until slowly, gently, we were each ready again, and then we took turns pleasing each other, giving ourselves without restraint, and finally coupling to a final release that was simultaneous, and so powerful that I actually heard a ringing in my ears.

“You’re amazing,” I told her.

She replied, “No. We are. We’re amazing.”

Later, as we lay together in darkness, our bodies still wet, our legs tangled, Amelia pulled her face close to my ear and said in a tone that was touching for its uncertainty, “There’s a word my heart keeps wanting me to use, but my brain won’t let me.”

I said, “I hope the word’s not ‘three.’ After that last one, I’m going to need a little more recovery time.”

She chuckled. “That sounds wonderful. But you told me you had an appointment.”

“People in Colombia are big on midnight meetings. They sleep ’til noon and have dinner at ten. I’ll only be gone an hour or so.”

She lay silently beside me for a long time before she said softly. “The word is love. I don’t want to say it because it scares me. And it might scare you. Doc? It’s true. I think I’m falling in love with you. It scares me because I’ve never truly been in love and, if it happens, you’ll have all of me, everything about me. I don’t want to scare you away by saying it, but it’s true. I’ve never really given myself before, but, if I do, I’ll no longer be just one person. Forever.”

I nuzzled the hair away from her ear and kissed her cheek. “The funny thing is, what you just said should scare me. It always has. I’ve lived alone so long.”

“What are you telling me, Doc?”

“I’m saying that maybe it doesn’t scare me so much now. I’m not sure.”

“Maybe?”

I kissed her again, and said, “Let’s see how it goes.”

The Plaza de Santa Domingo is a wide park and courtyard of brick, open to the sky but walled by ancient, ornate buildings, including a massive, dun-colored cathedral that was built in the 1500s. During the Inquisition, people were burned at the stake here.

On this night, though, the only fire was from torches burning around the courtyard. They threw a yellow, oscillating light on the faces of men and women gathered beneath the black sky. People were still dining at outdoor tables, served by waiters in formal dress, while jugglers, street merchants, guitarists, and magicians moved from table to table, working for tips.

I arrived at the plaza nearly half an hour early. I bought an Aguila at Paco’s, and bribed my way upstairs. There’s a balcony there, closed to the public, and it gave me a good view of the narrow streets that entered into the plaza.

If Stallings was bringing confederates, I wanted to know who they were before they had a chance to get a look at me.

He was forty minutes late, but he came alone. I let him sit for a while, watched him order another drink and light a fresh cigar. He checked his watch repeatedly.

Twice he touched the right pocket of his baggy, tent-sized slacks.

It’s a nervous mannerism. Something that people do when they’re carrying a gun.

When I came up behind Stallings and touched his shoulder, he jumped slightly. The reaction was unexpected but encouraging. It showed me he was on edge, not as confident as he wanted to appear to be.

As I seated myself, he looked at his watch and said, “You’re late. I’ve been waiting for nearly an hour.”

I said, “No, I was early—which is how I know you’re lying again. Where’s Kazan? The guy you call Puff. He’s the one I want to talk to.”

The big man fixed an expression of amusement on his face and gestured with his hands: slow down. “Taupou, if you keep pushing me, you know what’s going to happen? I’m going to reach across the table and pinch your little head off.” He flashed his toothy smile. “I think I’d enjoy that.”

Taupou, I didn’t know what that meant, and I wasn’t going to ask.

I held up my empty beer, signaling the waiter as I said, “You’re not mad, Earl, you’re just hungry. A guy like you needs lots and lots of calories. Let me get a menu.”

He leaned toward me, his voice loud enough to cause people at nearby tables to turn and stare. “Motherfucker. You are really starting to piss me off!”