Cities of the Red Night (11 page)

“Yes.”

“Were you ever tempted to go after the higher-ups?”

“No. It wasn't my business.”

“The same considerations may apply here. There is, however, one thing you can do: find the head and exorcise it. I have already done this with the body. Mr. Green agreed to burial here in the American cemetery.”

He walked across the room to a locked cabinet and returned with an amulet: runic lettering on what looked like parchment in an iron locket. “Not parchment—human skin…” he told me. “The ceremony is quite simple: the head is placed in a magic circle on which you have marked the cardinal points. You repeat three times: ‘Back to water. Back to fire. Back to air. Back to earth.' You then touch the crown of the head, the forehead, and the spot behind the right ear, in this case—he was left-handed—with the amulet.”

There was a knock at the door, and a middle-aged Greek woman with a mustache wheeled in the dinner of red mullet and Greek salad. After dinner and brandy we got up to take our leave.

“I have said you may not be called upon to act. On the other hand, you may be called upon. You will know if this happens, and you will need help. I can give you a contact in Mexico City … 18 Callejón de la Esperanza.”

“Got it,” said Jim.

“My driver will take you back to the Hilton.”

*   *   *

“Nightcap?”

“No,” Jim said. “I've got a headache. I'm going up to the room.”

“I'll check the bar. See you very shortly.” I had seen someone I knew from the American Embassy. Probably CIA. I could feel that he wanted to talk to me.

He looked up when I walked in, nodded and asked me to join him. He was young, thin, sandy-haired, glasses … refined and rather academic-looking. He signaled the waiter and I ordered a beer.

After the waiter had brought the beer and gone back to the bar, the man leaned forward, speaking in a low precise voice.

“Shocking thing about the Green boy.” He tried to look concerned and sympathetic but his eyes were cold and probing. I would have to be very careful not to tell him anything he didn't already know.

“Yes, isn't it.”

“I understand it was uh well, a sex murder.” He tried to look embarrassed and a bit salacious. He looked about as embarrassed and salacious as a shark. He was cold and fishy like the Countess de Gulpa. I remembered that he was rich.

“Something like that.”

“It must have been terrible for the family. You didn't tell them the truth?”

Watch yourself, Clem.…
“I'm not sure I know the truth. The story I actually told them is of course a confidential matter.…”

“Of course. Professional ethics.” Without a trace of overt irony, he managed to convey a vast icy contempt for me and my profession. I just nodded. He went on. “Strange chap, Dimitri.”

“He seems very efficient.”

“Very. It doesn't always pay to be too efficient.”

“The Chinese say it is well to make a mistake now and then.”

“Did you know that Dimitri has resigned?”

“He didn't say so.…”

“He was the object of professional jealousy. Career men resent someone with independent means who doesn't really need the job. I should know.” He smiled ruefully, trying to look boyish.

“Well, perhaps you can avoid the error of overefficiency.”

He let that roll off him. “I suppose these hippies go in for all sorts of strange far-out sex cults.…”

“I have found their sex practices to be on the whole rather boringly ordinary.…”

“You've read
Future Shock,
haven't you?”

“Skipped through it.”

“It's worth looking at carefully.”

“I found
The Biologic Time Bomb
more interesting.”

He ignored this. “Dimitri's dabbling in magic hasn't done him any good either … career-wise, I mean.”

“Magic? That seems out of character.”

I could tell he knew I had just been to Dimitri's house for dinner. He was hoping I would tell him something about the house: books, decorations.… Which meant he had never been there. A slight spasm of exasperation passed over his face like a seismic tremor. His face went dead and smooth as a marble mask, and he said slowly: “Isn't your assistant awfully young for the kind of work you're doing?”

“Aren't you a bit young for the kind of work you're doing?”

He decided to laugh. “Well, youth at the helm. Have another beer?”

“No thanks. Got an early plane to catch.” I stood up. “Well, good night, Skipper.”

He decided not to laugh. He just nodded silently. As I walked out of the bar I knew that he deliberately was not looking after me.

No doubt about it. I had been warned in no uncertain terms to lay off and stay out, and I didn't like it—especially coming at a time when I had about decided to lay off and stay out. And I didn't like having Jim threatened by a snot-nosed CIA punk. The Mafia couldn't have been much cruder.

“Your assistant very young man. You looka the book called
Future Shock
maybe?”

When I got to the room I found the door open. As I stepped in I caught a whiff of the fever smell—the rank animal smell of Jerry's naked headless body. Jim was lying on the bed covered by a sheet up to his waist. As I looked at him I felt a prickling up the back of my neck. I was looking at Jerry's face, which wore a wolfish grin, his eyes sputtering green fire.

PORT ROGER

Page from Strobe's notebook:

The essence of sleight of hand is distraction and misdirection. If someone can be convinced that he has, through his own perspicacity, divined your hidden purposes, he will not look further.

How much does he know or suspect? He knows that the capture was prearranged. He surmises an alliance between the pirates and the Pembertons, involving trade in the western hemisphere, the planting of opium in Mexico, and the cultivation of other crops and products now imported from the Near and Far East. He suspects, or soon will, that this alliance may extend to political and military revolution, and secession from England and Spain.

What does he think is expected from him? The role of gunsmith and inventor, which is partially true. I must not underestimate him. He has already quite literally seen through Mr. Thomas. How long before he will see through the others?
Must be careful of Kelley.
The most necessary servants are always the most dangerous. He is a cunning and devious little beast.

Noah writes that I am interested in printing his diaries “for some reason.” Does he have any inkling what reason? He must be kept very busy as a gunsmith lest he realize his primary role.

How long will it take him to find out that Captain Jones and Captain Nordenholz are interchangeable? To grasp for that matter the full significance of his own name? To see that I am the de Fuentes twins? Finally, to know that I am also—?

*   *   *

Scarf around his neck         immediately arranged between them         turning to leer and wink at the armory. I am Captain Strobe, a slim siren. Coat glittering in the sun         flute from a distant star in their buttocks. Now I was smoke called Kelley         pale in my mind together with a
Yes.
Sandy hairs, member erect marching around was cleared. Dancing boys to the music played their bags         wriggling pale groin         toes twisted. We now have double crew down the Red Sea area. Story started with an argument         sentences to hang. The sentence preyed on merchant vessels carrying the cargo beautiful hanged back to life         women dancing lewdly and ensuring protection against their bodies once one had been rescued. He claimed to have learned the gallows smile. Gasping his lips back         surged erect         he ejaculated noose and knot feet across the floor. Spirits around his neck. Spurting six.

*   *   *

Today we reached Port Roger on the coast of Panama. This was formerly Fort Pheasant and had been used as a base by English pirates sixty years ago. The coast here is highly dangerous for the navigation of large vessels, owing to shallows and reefs. Port Roger is one of the few deepwater harbors. It is, however, so difficult to reach that only a navigator with exact knowledge of the passage can hope to do so.

The coastline is a distant green smudge on our starboard side. Strobe and Thomas scan the skyline with telescopes.

“Guarda costa…”
the boys mutter uneasily.

Capture by the Spanish means torture or, at best, slavery. If overtaken by a Spanish ship we will abandon ship in the lifeboats, leaving
The Great White
to the Spanish. The boarding party will receive a surprise, for I have arranged a device which will explode the entire cargo of powder as soon as the doors to the hold are opened.

Now the ship rounds and heads towards land. Strobe, stripped to the waist, has taken the wheel, his thin body infused with alertness. Two boys are taking soundings on both sides, and the escort ship is a hundred yards behind us. We are sailing through a narrow channel in a reef, Mr. Thomas and Kelley calling out orders as the ship slips like a snake through a strip of blue water. The coastline is ever clearer, trees slowly appearing and low hills in a shimmer of heat. An inaudible twang like a loosed bowstring as the ship glides into a deep blue harbor a few hundred yards from the shore, where waves break on a crescent of sand.

We drop anchor a bare hundred yards from the beach,
The Siren
a like distance behind us. From the harbor the town is difficult to discern, being sheltered by a thick growth of bamboo and set among trees and vines. I had the curious impression of looking at a painting in a gold frame: the two ships riding at anchor in the still blue harbor, a cool morning breeze, and written on the bottom of the frame: “Port Roger—April 1, 1702.”

The trees part, and Indians in loincloths carry boats to the water. The boats are fashioned by securing a raft between two dugout canoes which serve as pontoons. These boats ride high in the water and are propelled by two oarsmen facing forward, after the manner of Venetian gondoliers. This day presents itself to my memory as a series of paintings.…

*   *   *

The Oarsmen

Thin copper-red bodies leaning against the oars as boats glide forward in a silver spray of surf and flying fish against a background of beach and palm trees.

*   *   *

Unloading the Cargo

Bright red gums, sharp white teeth, buttocks exposed as the cargo is passed over the side with much singing and laughter. The boys make up songs about the cargo as it is passed along to the rafts and relayed to the beach. These songs, translated by Kelley, who has sidled up to me in his pushy ghost way, seem flatly idiotic.

The boys are unloading powder kegs. We offer to help but the Indians sing. “White man's hands slippery like rotten bananas.” Now they pass up the powder kegs.… “This go boom boom up question's ass.”

I ask Kelley what is this “question”?

“Short for Inquisition.”

Boy holds up keg of opium.… “Spanish no get this, shit come in pants, very dirty
muy sucio.
”

“And Kiki is getting a hard-on because he knows I look at his asshole when he bends over for
opio.
”

“I was thinking of María.”

“Take off the cloth and show us María.”

Kiki blushes, but he must obey the rules of this game. He takes off his loincloth, smiling shyly to reveal lush purple-pink genitals, nuts tight, cock straining up, the flower smell of it fills the hold.

“María his asshole. I fuck him her spurt six feet.…” He looks around, challenging the boys who sit on the opium kegs.

Some of the boys extract gold nuggets from little pouches at their belts cunningly contrived from Spanish testicles.

“He love this so much I keep it in his nuts. Soon get rich like him.”

“That should be easy for a bastard like you.”

“Put your yellow shit where your mouth is, sister fucker. I see you do it with my own eyes.”

An area is cleared and carefully measured off and the bets placed. Kiki bends over, hands on knees. The other boy, who looks like Kiki's twin brother, uncorks a little-phallus-shaped vessel of pink coral, and a powerful odor fills the hold, already heavy with the smells of opium, hashish, and salt water drying on young bodies. The reek from the pink coral container is a heavy sweet rotten musky smell like a perfumed corpse, or like the smell you catch after lightning strikes.

The unguent glistens in the dim light of the hold, where red limbs stir lazily like fish in black water. Now the boy rubs the glowing unguent up Kiki's ass and Kiki writhes and bares his teeth as the other boy slides it in and they both light up and glow—for a moment the hold is bright as day with every face and body clearly outlined.

*   *   *

Radiant Boys

“Bucking for Radiant Bars,” Kelley mutters sourly.

“Radiant Bars?” I ask.

“Yeah. It's the old army game from here to eternity. Now you may know Radiant Boys is a special type ghost, when you see one you die soon after. Of course you can get used to anything and bright boys is all in the day's work to me. Now a good strong Radiant Boy can light up a room with a twenty-foot ceiling. One of the best lived in an Irish castle and was the ghost of a ten-year-old boy strangled by his insane mother. That one killed three cabinet ministers and the vicar.

“So the dirty-trick boys get wind of this good thing and set up Project RB to take care of key enemy personnel. They don't even know what buttons to push. Project RB is dumped into the lap of us tech sergeants. We get half-hanged, half-drowned, half-strangled, the medics pawing us over.… ‘How did it
feel?
Did you get
radiant
?'