Hazards (22 page)

“You have only walked forty paces,” he noted.

“Call me a cab,” I said.

He shrugged. “All right—you’re a cab.”

“Me and God don’t appreciate no backtalking constabularies,” I said. “Get me a horse or a wagon, or you’re going to be cooking me meals for the next seventy years.”

That
got a little action, and a few minutes later I was being carted off to La Paz in the back of a hay wagon. (Well, they
called
it a hay wagon, but I’m pretty sure hay is stiff and grassy and doesn’t smell like pig manure.)

We hit La Paz at about nine o’clock at night, and they didn’t have no drunken bellringers in their church, because at eleven and a half thousand feet there wasn’t nobody with the energy to climb up to the bell. In fact, it’s my own guess that church bells grow naturally in Bolivia, like trees and bushes and such, since no one in their right minds would want to carry one that high.

I was more than a little hungry when the wagon dropped me off in town, and I saw from some sogns that I was on Matilde Street, which I planned to change to Lucifer & Abigail Street just as soon as we got hitched, and I walked a few paces, which wasn’t no easier in La Paz at night than it was in Cochabomba in the afternoon, but finally, after enormous effort, I came to Bellisima’s Ristorante, which was four buildings down from when I got off the wagon and seemed to have wandered over from Italy by mistake. I looked in a window and saw that all the tables were covered by checkered tablecloths, all the chairs were old and rickety, and all the waiters had thick black mustaches.

I figgered I had just enough money to buy myself a meal, and maybe a few quarts of beer to bring out the nuances of its flavor, so I walked through the doorway and who should I see sitting right in front of me but Major Theodore Dobbins, late of His Majesty’s armed forces.

I walked right over and pulled up a rickety chair, which was the only kind they had.

“What the devil are
you
doing here?” he demanded.

“I was just passing through,” I said. “Small world, ain’t it?”

“
Too
damned small,” he muttered.

“And how’s your lovely wife, the former widow Emily Perrison?” I asked. “I ain’t seen her in maybe twelve or thirteen years. Has she changed much?”

“Not in the past decade,” answered the Major.

“Give her my regards.”

“She’s been dead for eleven years,” he explained. “It seems she fell off a boat in crocodile-infested waters with no one to save her or pull her out.”

“Poor thing,” I said. “All alone, was she?”

“Except for me.” He shook his head in wonderment. “To this day I don’t know how the crocs could stand to get that close to her.”

“Ain’t you also got an adopted son?”

He nodded his head. “Horace. An ugly, foul-mouthed little brute if ever I saw one. I finally sent him off to military school.”

“Back home to Britain?” I asked.

“The Soviet gulags. I figured he’d get the discipline he’d need there.”

“You always was the caring sort,” I said.

“And right now I care for the Baroness Walters,” he said. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “I don’t know how you found out about her, but I won Emily’s hand in marriage when you were my rival and I can do it again.”

“I was young and immature then,” I said. “And let’s be honest: we wasn’t neither of us interested in her hand except when it was signing checks. Besides, I hear you got another rival for the dear Baroness.”

“That scoundrel Cornwall. A man of low moral standing and ill repute.”

“Not like us, huh?” I asked.

“Precisely, my dear Doctor Jones,” he said. “I am glad to see we understand one another.”

“Better than you might think, Major,” I said.

“I assume it has come to your attention that I am paying court to the Baroness Walters,” he said.

“It ain’t exactly escaped my notice,” I told him.

“That blaggard Cornwall is trying to horn in on…let me rephrase that. He refuses to acknowledge my squatter’s right to…um, that doesn’t sound a lot better, does it?” He frowned for a minute. “At any rate, he has no business being here, and as the husband of the wealthiest woman in Bolivia, I would be very generous to any friend who sent that Australian mountebank on his way.”

Actually, I was about to make the same offer to him, but I didn’t see no sense getting into an argument when poor Miss Abigail was just wasting away with no one to love her, so I told him I’d sure consider it, and that a little down payment would put me in a charitable mood regarding his intentions, and he right away reached into his pocket and guv me a twenty-pound note.

I got up and took my leave of him, since if he was here it meant she was there and doubtless waiting to fall into the arms of any handsome man of the cloth who was ready and willing to sweep her off her feet (always assuming she didn’t top out at more than one hundred and thirty pounds.)

I walked out into the street and realized I didn’t know where the Baroness lived. I figgered I’d probably have to wait until daylight, and then head off to some house that probably looked a little bigger than the Chrysler Building, but as I was trying to decide whether to spend the night on a park bench or perhaps find an obliging lady of quality what left her mercenary streak in her other dress, I heard a voice calling to me. I turned to see where it was coming from, and it seemed to me that it was emanating from a tavern called
The Gelded Goliath
, what looked like it had been built about the time that David whipped the original Goliath in straight falls. I wandered over and went inside it, and the second I entered a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me aside, and a voice kind of hissed: “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

“You called me over, Brother Cornwall,” I said, because the second I heard his voice I knew it was Rupert Cornwall, even though he didn’t say “Cobber” or “bloke” or “kangaroo” nor nothing else in Australian.

“I mean, what are you doing in La Paz at all?” he demanded.

“Just enjoying the scenery,” I answered.

“It’s night out!”

“I was taking a walk and enjoying the cool night air,” I said.

“We’re at twelve thousand feet and you can barely
find
the air!”

“Would I be correct in assuming you are less than thrilled to see me again, Brother Rupert?” I asked.

“Of the ten people in the world I wanted never to lay eyes on again, you’re at least three of them!” he snapped.

“You got to let go of them bygones, Brother Rupert,” I said.

“Six of those bygones spent an entire afternoon beating the hell of out me in Hamburg!” he bellowed. “I had Lady Edith Quilton all wrapped up and ninety-eight percent delivered back in Rajasthan when you showed up! And thanks to you, I got to spend an extra four months in the Hong Kong jail!”

“But outside of that we’ve always been friends,” I said.

“Those are the only times in my life I’ve ever been anywhere near you!”

“What about now?” I asked.

“What
about
now?” he repeated. “What are you doing here, as if I couldn’t guess?.”

“Actually, I was just having a friendly chat with my old friend Major Theodore Dobbins.”

“How much did he offer you?”

“Not one red cent,” I said. “I know I seem irresistible, but he hankers after women.”

“He hankers after one woman in particular,” said Rupert. “He’s doomed to be disappointed.”

“Must be quite a looker if you both want her,” I said.

“I think I can truthfully say that there’s not another one like her anywhere in the world,” answered Rupert kind of carefully.

“So I’ve heard,” I said.

“Then you know the woman of whom I’m speaking?”

“Not personally,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Not
ever
,” said Cornwall. “I’m warning you, Lucifer—stay away from her.”

“If I was you, I’d be more concerned with warning the Major,” I said. “He seems to think he’s got a prior claim on her.”

“I’ll make short work of him,” said Rupert. “He thinks he’s dazzling her with his credentials, but I happen to know he was cashiered out of His Majesty’s armed forces, and he is wanted for dealing in certain perishable commodities in six African countries. What do you think of that?”

“So the other three dropped their charges, did they?” I replied.

“There were nine?” he asked, pulling out a pencil and a small notebook and starting to scribble away in it.

“Of course, he might have told her a little something about you,” I said.

“I can explain every one of them!” he snapped. Then he paused and frowned. “Of course, the four underaged girls and the dead chicken might cause a little problem.”

“So will the fact that you got the entire Greek and Turkish armies after you,” I said. “First time they stopped shooting at each other in thirty years.”

“I’ll just tell her I made peace between those two warring nations,” said Cornwall with a shrug. “Why bother her with unimportant details?”

I agreed that there wasn’t no reason for him to recite all them details to the Baroness, since I planned to tell her about ’em first anyway, and we chatted about this and that, and finally he asked me how long I planned to stay in La Paz.

“Well, I’m really just on my way to this Macho place over in Peru…” I began.

“Macchu Pichu?” he asked

“The very spot,” I said. “But I’m a little short of funds, so I guess I’m going to have to stick around La Paz until I can raise a grubstake, or maybe find a kind-hearted sponsor.”

“Look no farther,” said Cornwall. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty, which he handed to me. “Have a safe trip. Be sure to write. Boy voyage. You might as well start now; there are no jaguars up this high.”

“Why, that’s right generous of you, Brother Cornwall, and I’d be less than a Christian gentleman of modesty and humility if I waited another second to start my trek to this here not-quite-lost empire.”

And with that, I stuffed the bill in a pocket and headed out the door.

Now, it ain’t generally known, but your body eventually adjusts to altitude, and after six days in Cochabomba and a night in La Paz, I was back in my vigorous prime and could walk almost a block without getting winded. I spotted a donkey hitched up in front of a bar, with a guy sitting on the wood sidewalk just in front of it, so I moseyed over and asked how much he wanted for the donkey.

“It is not mine to sell, Señor,” he said.

“I didn’t ask whose it was,” I told him. “I asked how much you wanted for it?”

His whole expression changed, and a kind of happy glow came over his face.

“Ten dollars American, Señor?” he said hesitantly.

I shook my head. “It’ll have to be twenty. I ain’t got nothing smaller.” Then I thunk on it for a minute. “For the other ten, you can tell me how to get to Baroness Walters’ house.”

“You mean her palace, Señor,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” I said. “Slip of the tongue.”

He told me where she was, unhitched the donkey and guv me the reins, and held out his hand for the money, and a minute later I was on my way to the biggest farm I ever did see. The fields didn’t look like much, just a bunch of bushes with ugly leaves and no flowers nor corn nor anything interesting, but it spread out for miles. It took the donkey a good hour to make it up to the house, which might have been smaller than Buckingham Palace or that big art museum in Paris but I wouldn’t bet on it.

A tall young guy with slicked down coal-black hair and matching eyes, and wearing a uniform that didn’t seem to belong to no army I’d ever heard of, opened the door.

“Yes?” he said.

“Good morning to you, Brother,” I said. “Is the Baroness in?”

“It is the middle of the night,” he answered.

“It is?” I said. “How time flies. Especially up here, where it ain’t got much air to hold it down.”

“Who are you?” he said.

“I’m the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones, just back from curing a leper colony in Upper Volta.”

“There
are
no lepers in Upper Volta,” he said.

“Well, maybe I heard wrong and it was next to a leopard colony,” I said. “Whatever it was, they was in a bad way until I comforted ’em with the Word of the Lord.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “We have no lepers in La Paz.”

“That’s because they’re afraid to come a-callin’ when Lucifer Jones is on the job, passing out heavenly amnesty and salvation right and left,” I said. “I’ve come to see the Baroness.”

“I don’t know if she’ll see you,” he said.

“She’s been struck blind?” I asked. “Then we ain’t got no time to waste. I’ll recite the Psalm of Fifi over her, and lay my hand on her eyes and she’ll be seeing normal again in no time. Well, in six months, anyway.”

“The Psalm of Fifi?”

“My own updating of the Psalm of Sheba,” I told him.

“I’m afraid you misunderstand, Doctor Jones.”

“You mean she
can
see?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

That was a relief, because if she really had been struck blind she’d never be able to see how much better a figure I cut than the Major or Cornwall. In fact, it was such an open and shut contest that they probably should have made me wear a mask or something, the way the best racehorse has to carry extra weights.

“What’s your name, son?” I asked him.

“Julio,” he said.

“Well, Julio,” I said, “why don’t you take me to the Baroness right now? All I got’s a hundred dollar bill, but if the Baroness can make change I’ll catch you on the way out.”

He led me to a staircase that could have held the whole London Philharmonic Orchestra, with room left over for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and we started climbing it. I had to stop three or four times to rest, but eventually we made it all the way up to the second floor, and we went down a corridor for maybe the length of a football field, and finally we came to a door that probably wasn’t no more impressive that anything one of them Henrys or Louies ever hung on the royal bedroom, and Julio stopped and knocked on it.

“Come,” said a voice that sounded kind of like a bullfrog in his death throes.