The Scared Stiff (17 page)

"Arturo, that's wonderful!" I said.

"So the deal is," he told me, "you're goin' in under an alias, she'll fix it all in the computer, give you a room, you don't have to pay nothin' till the end, when it's safe to use the credit card. And you come to ask me for help 'cause I drove you other times you been down here, and you know my gringo brother-in-law that died, and you gotta move outa Rancio because your ex-wife traced you there."

"Boy," I said. "It all ties together, doesn't it?"

"It better tie together," he said, "or you're in shit."

Madonna. I said, "What's my name now?"

"Well, she just had a cancellation," he said, "so she put it back in the computer, because they got all the records on that guy. So your alias is, you're Keith Emory."

"Keith Emory," I said, and spelled it. "Like that?"

"I dunno, she didn't spell it out. She'll take care of you, don't worry."

"And what's my real name?" I asked. "When I'm in California, producing movies?"

"We didn't get to that," he said. "You can pick that one for yourself. You got two — three hours to come up with somethin'."

"Okay," I said.

I looked at the brochure some more. Casa Montana Mojoca. A vacation with no surprises. I could live with that.

As we drove through Marona, a pleasant old plantation town of whitewashed stone buildings, a number of modern banks, and the usual slums all around the perimeter, Arturo said, "You got your name yet?"

"Yes," I said. "I'm salting myself away, so my name is Brine."

"Whatever," he said.

"And I want a first name that sounds like Barry, at last," I said. "I've been too many other people. So I'll be Gary Brine. The big movie producer."

"There you go," he said. "Gary Brine. That's her husband's office."

On our left we were passing a yellow stucco building with a wooden sign out front showing several names. Just ahead of us down this block was a sprawling red-brick hospital. I said, "What office? Whose office?"

"Dulce's husband," he said.

We were past the building now. I said, "So she's married? Dulce?"

"Married," he said, and laughed. "She got six kids, man."

"And what's her husband do, that he's got an office?"

"He's a doctor. Woman doctor, you know?
He's
not a woman, he's a doctor for women."

"I follow," I said. "And what's the last name?"

"De Paula."

"Dulce de Paula."

"Dulce and Fernando de Paula. And you're Keith Emory. Except you're really Gary Brine, big movie producer."

I said, "I've been thinking about that, Arturo, and I think maybe I'm a medium movie producer. I don't work on the big things that everybody knows about, because then I'd have to talk about how I'm buddies with all these big stars and stuff, and I wouldn't like that. So I'm a producer that does the small crap."

"Whatever," he said.

We were past the main part of Marona now, headed out into Guerrera's central forest. Soon we were running along the side of a ridge, green slope upward on our left, downward to our right. From time to time I caught a glint of bright water down there past all the green.

The sign for Casa Montana Mojoca could not have been more discreet. Small plain-white block letters on a dark green background on a sign that couldn't have been larger than a foot square stood humbly beside a blacktop road on the right, giving only the name of the hotel. An even more discreet rectangular sign in the same color scheme, nailed to a tree, said PRIVADO.

Arturo took this road, and we angled down toward the Siapa. So, I thought, a riverside resort hotel: not bad.

Except it wasn't. The blacktop road, barely two lanes wide, with nothing but forest on both sides, descended the slope, and there at the bottom was the river, and on the river a ferry. In fact, two ferries; I saw one on the farther shore, just pulling out. These ferries were small and open and could carry possibly three cars. They were mostly dark green, with white highlights, the same colors as the two signs back at the main road, and they were very shiny and clean.

A wooden barrier was down across the road, just this side of the ferry slip, with a shingled guard shack next to it. A man in a dark green uniform with white piping and a tan clipboard came out and spoke with Arturo and checked something off on his list: Keith Emory, I supposed. A display of security to calm the timorous North American.

We were the only passengers on our ferry, with its polite two-man crew in dark green and white. We got out of the Impala to enjoy the ride, leaning on the gleaming white wood railing that ran down the side of the boat.

The ferry coming the other way carried only a beer truck, and as we passed each other in the middle of the sparkling river I read the brand names on its side: Corona, Heineken, Budweiser. I was willing to bet they put away a lot of Bud Light over there.

As we neared the opposite bank, Arturo and I got into the Impala again, front seat and back. The ferry bumped into position, the wooden pole barrier was lifted, and we drove past a waiting taxi with a white-haired couple in the back and up the curving blacktop road into more forest.

Somehow, this forest seemed groomed, as though it had a regular appointment at the hairdresser. The shrubbery along the road had clearly been shaped and maintained, and the trees farther back were less encumbered with vines than I was used to in Guerrera. Some distance away, at one point, I saw a group of people on horseback, riding slowly in single file. They were mostly in pastels.

The first sight of the hotel was out of a children's book. We came around a curve, and there was a medieval castle combined with a wedding cake, four stories high with setbacks, gleaming white in the middle of its own manicured lawns. To its left, extending away, I could see the beginning of the golf course.

The high porte-cochere entrance tried to suggest that this hotel had been here since its guests arrived in horse-drawn carriages, but in fact the building was surely less than ten years old. A doorman and two bellboys, all in the same dark green and white, one of the bellboys holding onto a wheeled luggage cart, came out to greet us, but then looked blank-faced as Arturo drove on by.

Gary Brine was a special case. Arturo steered the Impala off the curving blacktop onto an AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY gravel drive, and we sailed around the corner of the wedding cake, seeing more of the golf course, now out ahead of us. Arturo came to a stop next to a part of the side of the building where a white door stood in a little white clapboard separate section of its own, with square double-hung windows flanking the door on both sides. A brass plate identified the door, but I was feeling a little too tense to read it.

"Okay, Mr. Brine, you're on," Arturo said.

I took a deep breath. I'm on. That's right, it's a performance, a show. I grasped my bag and, as Arturo got out at the left front, I got out at the rear right. Would Garry Brine wait for the cabby to lead and introduce him? I thought not; I opened the white door and stepped inside and said to the three women at desks in there, "Hi. Who's Dulce?"

They giggled. It was a sunny air-conditioned room, painted light yellow, with light green industrial carpeting. Five desks, each with its own computer terminal, two of them unoccupied, were spaced almost at random around the room. Large blown-up photos of other hotels were mounted on the walls.

One of the three women — they were all thirtyish and attractive, in an overblown yet muted way, like Luz dressed for the office — rose, still giggling, and said, "We all are. But you want Mrs. de Paula."

"That's right," I said, and Arturo came around me to do a quick explanation in Spanish. The woman who'd told me they were all sweet — yes, of course — replied and then looked at me with new interest. "This way, please," she said.

I followed her, and Arturo followed me, through the room to a closed door on the opposite wall. The woman knocked, a female voice spoke from within, and my guide opened the door, leaned in, and said something. Then she stepped back, smiled a bit shyly at me, and gestured for me to go inside. Movie producers, apparently, carried a bit of clout.

The office I stepped into was as large as the one outside but had only one occupant, one desk, and no computer terminals. The woman now rising from that desk, coming around it, hand out, face smiling, must have been more or less my contemporary, if she'd been Arturo's first love, but she seemed somehow older, more maternal. She was a large big-boned woman, probably five foot ten, with shortish pepper-and-salt hair in neat waves, neither fussy nor flyaway. She wore a white frilled high-neck blouse and full black slacks. Both wrists were adorned with gold bracelets that made small tinkling sounds when she moved.

"How are you?" she said, and her voice was a rich contralto.

"Much better now, Señora de Paula," I told her, and shook her firm hand. "Thanks to you and Arturo here."

"Oh, Arturo," she said, with an indulgent laugh, as though we were talking about some scamp of a boy. I saw then that maternalism was her strategy for dealing with the entire world, which of course made her perfect to run this hotel.

"I'm Gary Brine, by the way," I said. "I don't know if Arturo told you."

"Mr. Brine," she acknowledged. "But not while you're here."

"No, I understand I'm Keith Emory for a while."

"Until your problems are solved," she said.

I laughed. "Oh, Señora," I said, "if it were only that easy!"

Arturo now came around from behind me, a kind of sheepish grin on his face. "Dulce," he said, exactly like that scamp of a boy bringing an apple to teacher. Or a mango here, I suppose.

"How are you, Artie?" she said, making it clear she enjoyed him and saw no reason to take him seriously.

"Feelin' fine," he said, and took her hand, and kissed it.

Arturo's usual greeting for a woman was a bear hug, but I could see where Dulce de Paula wouldn't get much of that sort of treatment. Still with the same indulgent smile, she said, "How's Ifigenia?"

"Not yet gone to her reward," Arturo said.

She laughed, delighted with her scamp. "Artie, that's a terrible thing to say."

"Ifigenia
is a terrible thing to say," he told her. "Why'd you ever let me go, Dulce? If I'd stuck with you,
I'd
be a doctor today and Fernando would drive my cab."

"You'd both probably like that," she commented, and turned back to me. "And I think
you'd
probably like to get settled."

"Yes, please."

"Would you like someone to show you to the room? I see you don't have much luggage."

"I've been moving fast and light," I explained. "Is it complicated to get to the room? If not, I'll just go there." Because, of course, I had no cash for a tip.

"It's very easy," she promised me. "Come look."

Arturo said, "I'll go see are there any customers out front. See you later, Mr. Brine."

"Thanks for everything, Arturo," I told him, with just the proper distance between the rich North American and the poor Hispanic cabby.

"De nada,"
he told me. "Adios, Dulce."

"So long, Artie."

Arturo left, and I heard the women in the outer office giggle again as I bent over the hotel map Dulce de Paula opened onto her desk. This was a very snazzy four-color map, the various floors projected at angles that made the whole thing simple. Everything was color-coded, with an index of the hotel's features.

"We are here," she said, and pointed first to the map, then to a second door on the left side of her office. "When you go out there, you'll be in this hallway. You see?"

"Sure."

"You go straight down here, and turn left, and that's the elevator bank. You're on the third floor, Room Three-twenty-three."

"Okay."

She handed me a folder. "Your key and the minibar key."

Minibar key. Have there ever been more beautiful words in the English language? "Thank you," I said, and took the folder.

"You're already checked in as Keith Emory," she assured me, "so you won't have to go through any of the formalities."

"That's wonderful. I really appreciate this."

She extended her hand. "Do enjoy your stay with us, Mr. Emory," she said.

"I know I will," I told her, and now
I
kissed her hand.

She liked that. "Oh, go on," she said.

I had become her latest scamp.

The bathroom! Never mind the minibar, look at this bathroom! The lights, the plumbing, the gleaming tile! The mirrors! The thick towels! You could jump off the roof of this building, and if you landed on these towels you'd be safe.

The room itself was not very large, a typical Holiday Inn sort of room, which has become the hotel industry standard. The king-size bed was not too soft, not too firm, but just right. The television set got CNN, HBO, Showtime, and pay-per-view. The minibar had one of everything and two Bud Lights. Above it the snack bar contained, among its many familiar wonders, macadamia nuts.

The view out the window was of part of the golf course. Men in madras pants and women in madras skirts made their slow way past, giving obeisance to the little white ball.

I showered for a long long time. Then I lay on the bed and watched a Steve Martin movie on HBO. I laughed whether it was funny or not.

Safe. Safe at last. Manfredo and Luis and the other Luis with the bad arm and José and Pedro and
poco
Pedro with the machete can't get me here; they can't get across that river, not on
those
ferries. The insurance investigator and Rafael Rafez can snoop around all they want; they'll never find Barry Lee alive and never find proof he isn't dead.

If only Lola could be here with me. I tried to dream up some way to make it possible for her to fly down, check in as a single. We could pretend we didn't know one another by day, sleep together by night.

And how long would it be before the insurance investigator arrived, sniffing around, checking out the guest list? There was no way, dammit, no way. Lola couldn't use a false name because she'd have to show her passport. And I couldn't dare get the terrific Señora de Paula to slip in a second person incognito because it would screw up the original story. So I just had to be patient.