Planet Willie (19 page)

I tell him
that I’m prepared to interest him in any way he sees fit, within reason, and he
tells me about his daughter’s birthday party. “I honor the whole town,” he
says, sweeping his arm through the air to indicate the town and rattling our
beers in the process. Then he tells me how he’s lost his fireworks man. Been
thrown in jail, alas, on drug charges.

“The party is
tomorrow night, Willie. Can you do my fireworks?”

“I would be
honored, Mister Queso,” I say. “My partner and I find it especially gratifying doing
family occasions. Is there anything special you’d like done?”

“
Si
,”
he says, his dark, dead eyes appearing to fill with some kind of emotion. “I
would like my daughter’s name spelled out in the sky. I would like for all of Acapulco
to look up at the stars and see
mi niña
’s name.”

“Well that
sounds just beautiful, Mister Queso,” I say, seeming to recall that I’ve seen
Fourth of July shows that spelled out a few patriotic sentiments and hoping
that Billy does spelling. “What’s your daughter’s name?”

He bites his
lip and sets his watery eyes on me again.
“Maricruz Xochitl
Encarnación de Guadalupe y Queso.”

“Lovely name,”
I say after a moment. “I once dated a girl called Maricruz in a little town
north of Shreveport.”

“Not
Maricruz,” he says with a tight smile. “This is not your Shreveport. Her name
is Maricruz Xochitl Encarnación….”

“Fair enough,
Mister Queso,” I interrupt. “If you’ll just have somebody write it down for me,
we’ll get it up there. I’m assuming one of these fellas can write.”

Queso snaps
his fingers and the literate one, I guess, goes off to find pencil and paper. “One
of my men will meet you at your hotel at nine tomorrow morning and bring you up
to see the house,” he says, liking me again. “I have a large pleasure garden
where you can set up your equipment. And then after the party, perhaps we can
discuss diving again. I like to think we could have a future together, Willie.”

“Who knows,” I
say, shaking his hand. “High divers are a proud fraternity, and your career has
been an inspiration to us all. Wish I’d gotten down here sooner, really, to see
you dive in your prime, but I’ve been fortunate enough over the years to pick
up a few pointers from the celebrated Rock Lightford. Ever hear of him?”

If I’m
expecting any kind of reaction, it’s not the one I get. Queso’s face falls, and
he reaches out to place a beefy hand on my shoulder. “I met him once,” he says,
“very early in his career. He lacked talent, but he made up for it with heart.
I admire that, Willie.
Un gran corazón.
I’m very sorry for your loss.”

And before I
can figure out what I’ve lost, two Blancos have helped me out of my chair and
are escorting me out of the Mirador.

23

Before dawn there’s
a knock at my door, and I open it to Billy Sidell. He’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt
and looks like hell. It’s been just over a week since I last saw him, believe
it or not, but he appears to have aged. He sits down on the bed and tells me he’s
been doing eighty five in a flatbed truck for twenty-something hours and could
use a drink. We break into the minibar, which is exactly what I don’t need at
five in the morning, but they tend to go fast, the mini-bottles. Soon enough we
find ourselves contemplating mixtures of Grand-Marnier and Kahlua as I catch
him up on Queso and how I’m intending to recuperate the Madonna. Billy doesn’t
like it much, even with the kind of mini-bottles he’s killing. He likes it even
less when I tell him we’re going to spell Queso’s daughter’s name out in the
sky.

“I can’t do
that, Willie,” he says, murdering a bottle of Bailey’s.

“Don’t worry
about it,” I say. “I just need you to create a diversion. Ten minutes or so
should give me enough time to get inside the house and exchange the Madonna for
one of Kafka’s fakes. We get you paid up front, and then we never see Queso
again.”

At nine o’clock sharp we get a call from Queso’s man. We meet him downstairs and agree to
follow him up in Billy’s truck, which is parked down in the garage. Che is
parked down there too, and I take a fake virgin out of the trunk before joining
Billy. Then we pull around front and follow the suit’s black Mercedes out of
town.

After a mile
or two we leave the city behind. The road winds through a dense green growth of
palm trees and cacti and bushes sprouting beautiful red and orange flowers. The
landscape is more stunning than anything else I’ve seen in Mexico, and it makes me wish I could spend a little more time down there exploring the
area. Maybe working on my Spanish a bit and sampling those other varieties of
tequila I’ve missed. If tonight goes down as planned, however, I don’t imagine
I’ve got much more than twenty four hours left in sunny Acapulco, or for that
matter on Planet Earth.

Soon enough
the Mercedes is leading us off onto a dirt road, which we follow further up into the hills. We come to a gate guarded by two Blancos with machine guns, who
step aside to let us through, staring like they’d be more than happy to make us
target practice.

“We’ll park
the truck outside tonight,” I say to Billy. “I don’t want anybody setting off
alarms when we make a run for it.”

“I don’t like
it, Willie,” Billy says for what may be the hundredth time since dawn. “I was
getting into pheromones specifically because I didn’t want danger like this
anymore.”

“That was
before your wife left you, Billy. That was before we had a few beers in New York City and you remembered your name was Mister Pyrotechnics. Now is it, or is it
not?”

“It is,” he sighs.

“Then we are
going to blow up things in the sky, Billy. You understand me? We are going to light
fuses and detonate quantities of explosives. You with me here?”

“I’m with you,
Willie,” he says as we drive past a white-columned mansion fit for an American
president. “I guess I’ve got nothing to lose.”

 “That’s the
spirit,” I say. “Nothing to lose means we can only win.”

Billy shakes
his head and follows the Mercedes across a garden planted with palm trees and hedges.
The driver gets out and tells us we can set up over by the wall, which is
topped with razor wire. Queso wants the fireworks to burst out over the pool,
he tells us, so he can watch them from the patio, a tiled area about the size
of a football field between the pool and the house. Beyond the patio and behind
sliding doors is what looks like some kind of living room, which I’m hoping is
not far from the library. I tell the suit we’ll want payment in advance, which
he drives off to see about. Then Billy and I get down to unpacking the truck.
Meanwhile truckloads of caterers arrive and start arranging tables.

Over the next
several hours, Billy shows me how to set up these hard plastic mortar tubes
he’s got, and then how to load the shells. He also prepares the ignitors and
strings the fuses. Later that night we’ll attach the ignitors and hook the
fuses into this electronic switchboard, he explains, which runs off a car
battery and allows you to time all of your explosions real precisely. This
takes us into the afternoon, during which time I realize that you don’t get to
be Mister Pyrotechnics for nothing. It’s a complicated business. Once we’re
finished with it, another suit comes out to pay Billy. The party starts at
nine, he tells us, and Queso wants the fireworks for midnight. In the meantime, Billy and I head back into town for some well-deserved siestas.

24

Tiki torches line
the driveway up in the mountains later that night, and at the front gate the
white suits are wearing white tuxedos. White bow ties, too. It’s a nice touch. A
line of guests waits outside on a red carpet to be waved down by these wands
held by Los Blancos, which beep if anybody’s wearing a gun. Large men in suits
and pretty girls in tight dresses with no place to hide firearms step up one by
one with their hands in the air before being motioned through into the fiesta. Billy
and I drive a ways down along the wall, our headlights picking out more guests,
girls wobbling on high heels and men smoothing back slick hair. We find a distant
parking place, and I tell Billy he may as well bring the pheromones. He’s got
them in the back in a special suitcase, and I’ve got a Madonna rolled up down the
leg of the suit, which has incidentally been cleaned and pressed. The silver
buckle’s been buffed too, and though I’m unfortunately not wearing a hat, I
have to admit I’m looking pretty good. Billy too – he’s brought along a light
blue suit and a bolo that matches his belt.

At the
entrance Los Blancos pass a wand over us, and thankfully the Madonna keeps
quiet. Billy beeps, but that’s just his bolo, and the beep’s just like an
acknowledgment of his style. Then it’s fiesta time for two humble amigos charged
with a most perilous mission. Back in my officially living days, this is the
sort of moment when I might have said a little prayer, but now that I’m
posthumous, I’m not even going to begin trying to explain this situation via
prayer. Heaven can wait, so to speak.

Within the
walls Queso’s pleasure garden has undergone a transformation. Lanterns are
sprinkled through the trees, and I spot at least five fully stocked bars within
calling distance. They’ve built a sort of dance floor over the shallow end of
the pool, and a band of mariachis is doing variations on what sounds more or
less like
La Cucaracha
.

“Holy smokes,”
Billy says, as we stand there taking it all in.

“The smoke’s
up to you, Billy,” I say. “In the meantime, what do you say we make up for any
dignity lost with the mini-bottles by starting work on bottles suited for grown
men.”

Billy likes
the suggestion, so we go over to the nearest bar and focus our efforts on a
magnum of Jim Beam. Then Billy tells me he’d better have a look at his
fireworks while he can still see straight and takes his suitcase of pheromones off
through the garden.

Which leaves
me and the fiesta some time to get acquainted. It’s not yet ten o’clock, but there must already be several hundred people there. I take my stiff right leg for a
stroll around the pool, practicing my holas on the chiquitas. Over near the
dance floor one sweet thing in leopard skin and silicone lips wants to correct
my pronunciation, and we stand there for several minutes doing holas back and
forth before moving on to other subjects, I believe. After a few minutes with a
girl in leopard skin, you don’t know what you’re saying anymore, particularly
if it’s in Spanish. By the time she says adios with a kiss on my freshly shaven
cheek, I don’t know for sure whether we’ve shared our views on Mexican politics
or if maybe we’ve got a little rendezvous on the dance floor after midnight. She goes right on and kisses the other cheek, because lips like that were made
for kissing. Two delicious gummy worms perched there fresh as daisies. A
wonderful moment, which I choose to recognize with a little rarity called the
Sleeping Beauty. You shut the whole face down for a moment, then bring it up
ever so slowly like a spotlight. Ideally the eyes should flutter open naturally.
Simple yet effective. It says: I was asleep my whole life till you kissed me.
Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand they’ll just go right on
kissing. Lose sight of the boundaries, so to speak, and I have no doubt she
would have moved on to the third and fourth cheeks if a yacht in pinstripes
hadn’t pulled her off towards the hors d’oeuvres.

The band is
five guys in mustaches assaulting the guests with trumpet fire. They wear black
cowboy hats, short black jackets over white shirts, tight black pants lined
with silver studs, and black boots with pointed toes. It’s a hell of a costume,
which I acknowledge with an appreciative nod. I’ve always been partial to
Italian style, but you see a costume like that and can’t help but thinking that
someday you could make the switch to Mexican. Silver studs on the pants might
go nicely with a fourteen-carat buckle.

But honestly I’m
not on the scene for fashion tips, so I head house-wards to do a little
investigating. Casa, they call it in Spanish, although this is no casa. It’s
more like a plantation on steroids, and I’d need to find the leopard skin again
to know how to say that. Over on the patio they’ve got tables with white
tablecloths set up for dinner. Through the sliding glass doors is a large room
with a fireplace, couches everywhere, and two widescreen TVs. A couple of maids
in white uniforms scurry in and out of a swinging door to the left, which I
take to be the kitchen. To the right are two other doors, one of which I’m
hoping leads to the library, although I don’t imagine too much reading gets
done in Queso’s house. The library’s where he makes his death threats, apparently,
which is a kind of philosophy you don’t really need to acquire from books. A
man like Queso knows how to keep it simple, but then I’ve got a Madonna rubbing
suggestively against my leg and an intention to complicate things a bit.

As I study the
house, I catch sight of the man himself on the far side of the patio, where
he’s anchored on a lounge chair and is accepting handshakes from his guests. Next
to him on a stool sits a girl who must be his daughter, Maricruz Et Cetera.
She’s wearing a shiny black dress that covers her down to her ankles and wrists,
and she looks miserable. She’s hunched down on the stool like she’s trying to disappear,
although the chances of that are slim, considering she’s as wide as her padre. Every
time he booms out a greeting, she winces, and then proceeds to die of
embarrassment when somebody offers her a present. There’s a pile of them next
to her that all look professionally wrapped. I wonder where her friends are.
The only likely eighteen-year-olds I see are earning money catering or on the
arms of men her father’s age.

Queso sees me,
and I give him a wave, with a wink for Maricruz, which unfortunately only
embarrasses her more. Then I figure I’ll go back and see if Billy needs any
help attaching his fuses, or whatever it is he’s doing, when I hear English
being spoken and turn to find, not more than twenty feet away, none other than the
distinguished Farsinellis of Denver, Colorado.

“Actually the
word
mariachi
is a relatively recent bastardization of the French word
mariage
,”
the Professor is saying, “which means
marriage
, the traditional occasion
for this sort of music.”

Bella rolls
her eyes like Barry’s the bastardization, then gulps down some gin and eyes the
mariachis like what really interests her is tight pants. I slip away into the
crowd before they can see me. They know Queso’s Madonna is the original by now,
and I’m not too interested in testing their fidelity to truth and beauty when
Queso’s got money and power and could kill me if anybody like Bella tipped him
off to the real purpose of my visit to Acapulco.

It ends up
being quite a perilous walk through the garden, and I don’t just mean keeping
that Madonna concealed. First of all, I meet the Chief, who’s well into cerveza
and is happy to see me. I tell him I’ve got a little problem named Kafka that
I’d like to speak to him about, he tells me I’m welcome to stop by the station
any time. I refrain from mentioning that I’ve already stopped by for an
extended period and thank him kindly for the invitation.

Then I
discover that there are nuns present. Seems like everywhere I go, nuns keep
popping up, specifically Lulu, whom I find standing in a tight little cluster
with her nun friends, none of whom is Twiggy, and none of whom look too
friendly. I can’t imagine what they talk about in a fiesta setting, but I don’t
guess it’s Lulu’s gambling problem. As far as the debt problem goes, the
Madonna must have resolved that, which explains Queso’s invitation. Maybe he
loves the little orphans too, considering the money he’s lent them at twenty
five percent interest. That’s a scene in the library I would have liked to see.
Queso telling a nun called Lulu that he’ll hurt her if he doesn’t get his money
back, and Lulu offering up the family Madonna because the money’s been invested
in a little venture in a back room that didn’t pay dividends. Sort of puts
Cipriano and El Gordo’s begging into perspective, not that they’re not enjoying
the adventure of it at age thirteen.

Then over by a
bar under the trees, there’s a face I actually want to see. It’s Fernanda,
she’s drinking alone, and she’s wearing a little black dress that shows off what
was recently sunburn but is now a nice tan. Also she’s on crutches, and her
leg’s in a cast.

“Miss Shore, I presume,” I say, walking up to her. “What the hell happened to you?”

She smiles like
a woman made to smile, which is a smile I haven’t yet seen from her. “I
strained it sun tanning,” she says.

“Well the
tanning worked,” I say. “You look good.”

“Maybe I
didn’t put on enough lotion,” she says.

“You could
have called on me,” I say. “Or maybe the cast comes in handy when the purse is
too small and we’re both here for the same reason.”

“The music?”
she says.

“That and the
fireworks,” I say, “which I am happy to be assisting in providing this
evening.”

“Why doesn’t
that surprise me?”

“For once I’m
serious, sweetheart. Why don’t I get us two more drinks, and then I’ll take you
over and introduce you to Billy. I think you two might be a good influence on
one another.”

She offers her
arm, and we hobble over to my third bar that evening, where she’s doing bourbon
too, still a Southern girl despite it all. “Have you seen your sister?”

“I saw her,”
she says. “She didn’t want to see me. She knows why I’m here. It was wonderful,
really. For the first time in my life, she’s the bad girl, and I don’t know
what she can ever do to make up for this.”

“I always said
it, Fernanda. You were never bad enough.”

“Is that a
line?”

“Interpret it
as you will, sweetheart, but it’s true.”

“The night’s
not through, Willie,” she says. “I know why you’re here too, and there’s still
time left for me to be bad. And no, that’s not a line.”

“He’s already
got it. You’re not going to sell it to him.”

“Maybe not,
but I’ve got leverage. I know he stole it, and I’ll talk if I have to. But
somehow I think if it comes to talking, Mister Queso and I will find an
arrangement.”

“Fair enough,”
I say. “But here’s Billy, Mister Pyrotechnics of the Eastern Arizona Fireworks
Association three years running.” Billy looks up from his control panel and
gives us both a smile. “Billy, this is Fernanda,” I say. “She’s a bad woman,
and I hesitate to introduce you, but what she lacks in morality she sometimes
makes up for in charm.”

Billy smiles
even wider and shakes her hand like it alone is more charming than anything
he’s ever seen, much less held. “You really do fireworks,” Fernanda says to me,
clearly impressed.

“Not me,” I
say. “Billy. I’m just sort of an Assistant Mister Pyrotechnics.”

“Well that’s
just fascinating,” Fernanda says to Billy, moving around next to him to study
the control panel with more girlish wonder than Maricruz will get from opening
a thousand birthday presents.

“Billy also
does pheromones,” I say, “although maybe we should save that for another time.”

“Actually, we
met,” Billy mumbles. “I was at your gallery show in New York.”

“Well I’m so
sorry,” Fernanda says, seeming to mean it. “I was so busy that night, I didn’t
get a chance to talk to all the people I wanted to.”

“You looked
pretty busy,” Billy mumbles, blushing a bit. He’s so impressed by Fernanda that
he may well have forgotten that he was busy falling in love with Twiggy on the
night in question. “So this one here will launch the first shells,” he says,
moving her hand to show her how it will work. “I’m going to start it off with
red and green, which you probably know are the colors of the Mexican flag. Then
we’ll do lots of pink sparklers, since Maricruz is a girl and this is her
birthday celebration. People like the personal touch.”

Fernanda likes
it too, apparently. She’s just captivated, and I’ve more or less become
decoration, which wasn’t exactly what I was intending by introducing her to
Billy, but then I guess the spirit moves in mysterious ways. So I leave them to
talk fireworks and spend the next hour or so decorating various spots in
Queso’s pleasure garden, nodding along to the mariachi music and sort of trying
not to drink too much. Things never turn out like you plan, but then I guess it
wouldn’t be too much fun if they did. That’s what I tell myself, at least. I
try to remain philosophical. That’s what I do, because there’s really not much
other choice.

Midnight always comes soon enough, however, and when it does, the mariachis trail off at a
signal from Queso, which admittedly comes as a relief.
La Cucaracha
has
its limitations, and once I find the time for rehearsals, I’ll be needing to
find something else for my repertoire. When the last trumpet finally blows its
last note, Queso gets up from his lounge chair, which is a sort of entertainment
by itself. Then he gives a lengthy speech, I’m assuming on the virtues of his daughter,
who looks like she’d prefer to give up virtues forever if only he’d shut up. As
he speaks, I make my way up to the patio, and once he finishes with some
applause, he turns to me and nods. Ready for liftoff, the nod says, and so I
turn and hoof it back to Billy to start the show, which should be memorable.
Billy’s going along the line of mortar tubes making a few last checks. Fernanda’s
nowhere to be seen. I ask him where she went, he tells me she had to use the
ladies room.