The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy (24 page)

‘That's good. I'll contact our office in Bogotá and inform them to make all the necessary arrangements for your visit.'

She takes a small envelope from her purse and lays it on the table in front of me.

‘In there are your plane tickets and hotel reservations. Everything else will be taken care of. You leave for Bogotá in two days' time.'

With that she stands up, straightening her dress.

‘Is that all?' I ask.

‘Yes, that's all. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. I'm sure you'll find some fun around here.'

As she leaves the bar all eyes follow her. The alligator shifts position, the pool players continue their game. After a short while, wondering quite what fun might be on offer, I decide another drink might help me find it.

‘I like your sister,' says the barman, peanut in midair. ‘Remember, just suck in the sweet Mississippi air and dive into the mouth of that sonofabitch.'

His laugh is worrisome. The alligator thrashes the bars of its cage with its tail.

Somewhere in my dream the sun shines so brightly, so warmly. The sky: a massive blue; the clouds: somewhere else, far away. The creek: at the end of the track, caressed by the wattle tree. You look so beautiful, your white frock with the big red flowers. The blue leather belt around your waist and your hair smelling of the waterfall at the end of the rainbow. The sandwiches you made, the fruitcake and bottle of orange barley squash in the hamper. I look up at your profile, dazzling in the sunlight, as we walk through the garden gate, my toy boat in one hand, your hand, my very own mother's hand, in the other.

On awakening I find myself lying on the bathroom floor of another hotel room. The tile is cold on my cheek. My tongue is glued to my teeth like a dead lizard baked on a desert rock. My brain is pounding. This is too much. This has to be the end of it. Why does one drink always lead to mayhem?

I crawl to the bedroom, haul myself onto the mattress and under the covers. In time, sleep relieves me of anguish. More time slides by. I awaken to the encroaching dark of a Michigan night-time. I stare up at the ceiling fan until sleep blankets me again.

I sleep and dream.

I struggle to limp out of the room and drink soda from the drinks machine in the corridor. I place a ‘Do not disturb' sign outside my door. I go nowhere. I watch night turn to day and day back to night. I go nowhere on my ‘weekend break' until it is time to retrace my steps to O'Hare airport and board another plane to another place.

12

Zoo time

At the arrivals exit of Bogotá airport I'm met by a well-dressed man, nonchalantly holding a name sign across his chest. The contact is Fritz, a German bodyguard employed at the British Embassy. Soon I will learn he was targeted and recruited by the Medellin cartel following an indiscretion at the Bar Casa de La Mer. Three sailors, a jar of Vaseline, a tub of cocaine and some Polaroid snapshots had been Fritz's downfall. Not that he considered it a downfall these days, what with being paid to guard the British Ambassador's wife on the one hand and run some errands for the new bad boys on the block on the other. What the left hand doesn't know, as they say, and double pay every payday. Nice work if you can get it, eh Fritz? And, it goes without saying, all the white powder he can hoover up his ample Prussian nostrils. In fact, it's the first thing he does when we get to my hotel room later that evening. A little pile of powder on the little square mirror. Chop, chop, chop, chop, divide, divide, chop, chop, chop, chop. Customised silver straw. Woof.

‘I know you don't mind,' he says, his eyes smarting and grinning at the same time, only the slightest hint of a German accent. ‘I'm reliably informed you have a penchant for the stuff.'

‘Not just now, thanks,' I hear myself saying.

On the plane I'd resolved to stay straight for this leg of the trip. To keep a clear head. Maybe not sober, maybe not recovery in the way the Friary counsellors would deem it. But I will not drink. I will not drug. Fritz looks bemused. To confuse him more, to undermine whatever intelligence he received on me, I open the minibar and pull out a bottle of mineral water.

‘Care for a drink?' I ask. ‘I'm on the wagon.'

Fritz seems unsettled, like a newsreader who has lost the script.

Within the hour we are in the very same bar where, two years earlier, Fritz had been offered the career move. I feel uncomfortable and jittery with the glass of lemonade in my hand. I ditch the straw and light a cigarette.

‘I wasn't worried about losing my job,' explains Fritz, drinking his beer straight from the bottle. The backdrop to the bar is a painted scene of dockland debauchery. On the raised platform across the room the female prostitutes chat as they dance to 1970s music.

‘It was my wife, my boys. If they'd seen the photos my life would have been over. And my parents? No thank you.'

The man behind the bar, the caricature of a waiter with his pencil moustache, crisp white shirt and waistcoat, whispers into Fritz's ear. Not Spanish, probably French. A small packet appears on the bar. Fritz hands the man a twenty-dollar bill.

‘The best coke in Bogotá,' says Fritz, slipping the packet into his jacket pocket. ‘Five dollars a gram; one hundred percent pure.' He scratches his nose. ‘Later my friend, yes?'

I ignore the question, a trickling sensation running down the back of my throat.

‘So, as I explained in the car,' says Fritz in impeccable, if somewhat ponderous, English, ‘I am meeting you as the representative of two groups. Firstly, in my formal capacity to discuss your itinerary as the guest of the British Ambassador. And secondly, in my other capacity, as my alter ego, to help ease the safe delivery of your package to the big man on the hill.'

‘You talk and I'll listen,' I say, taking in the floor show: a tall Amazon giving me the hundred-dollar eye. I feel tired and listless. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be with this smug German coke fiend. And I don't much like the idea of the big man on the hill.

‘It's simple. Tomorrow night you go to dinner at the British Ambassador's house. You will meet these people.' He hands me a list of names and titles. I fold the paper and put it in my pocket.

‘As you will see, amongst other names is the mayor of Bogotá. He is running for the Presidency. Then there's Professor Gomez from the university medical school laboratories, and Dr Suskind, who represents the consortium of businessmen interested in the production side of your syringe. These are the important people. Are you listening?'

‘I can listen and look at the same time,' I reply. ‘Another drink, Fritz?' I turn on my bar stool, irritable, ill at ease. He nods and I order a beer and a lemonade.

‘Tell me, Fritz, how is it a bodyguard acts as an undersecretary?'

‘Let's just say I perform many services for the ambassador and his wife. For one, they delegate the care of guests to me.'

‘And the big man on the hill?' I ask.

‘The next day, as part of your social program, I am charged with taking you on a trip around the city. Part of the trip will be to the zoo on the hill.'

‘The zoo?'

‘The zoo.'

‘Buns for the elephants, eh Fritz?'

‘Anything you like Dr Malloy.'

When I get back to my hotel room the little red light is winking at me. I light another cigarette, having only just put one out in the middle of the fossilised logo in the sand bucket by the lifts.

I sit on the bed and ring the number to connect to my voicemail. I recognize the voice instantly.

‘Oh, you're not there. I got this number from Taneffe. I don't want to leave a message in case you've moved on. I'll call you later. It's Peter. Peter Blake. Okay, bye for now.'

I run it again. He sounds odd, odd enough to warrant my calling him.

‘Peter,' I say as he answers. ‘It's Anthony, you left a message.'

‘Yes, did I?' he says distractedly.

‘Are you alright? Alright about me being out here still?'

‘Of course, of course.'

‘What's happened?'

There's a silence. And then a sigh. And then he speaks in a low, sad voice.

‘Irene's dead.'

‘Irene?'

Another silence.

‘Yes, she's dead.'

‘When?'

‘The day you left. It's been awful. Police enquiry. Coroner's report.'

‘Oh my God, Peter,' I say as the news sinks in.

‘What happened?'

‘She killed herself.'

‘Oh my God.'

‘It was coming. You know it was coming.'

‘I'm so sorry, Peter.'

‘It's okay. I'll live.'

‘Is the inquest over?'

‘At last. They only released her body a couple of days ago.'

‘When's the funeral?'

‘Tomorrow at Christ the King.'

‘But …'

‘Don't worry.'

‘I'll burn a candle.'

‘That's nice. Matilda's coming.'

‘That's good. She and Irene were close for so many years.'

‘We all were, the four of us, back in the old days. Before you and Matilda split up.'

‘That's true. I'm glad she'll be there. Like family, if you don't mind me saying so.'

‘No, I don't.'

‘You okay, Peter?'

‘I'm okay. I must go, the doorbell's just rung.'

‘Okay, call you soon.'

‘Do that. Bye.'

In the ashtray, the cigarette has burnt down to a long wormy stub of smouldering grey ash. I light another and suck deep until the orange glow burns bright and live and hot.

The next afternoon, the day of the Ambassador's dinner, I meet the second secretary, a circumspect young man called Austin, over a surf and turf lunch. Austin goes over much the same ground Fritz had the previous evening. He is thin, thirty-something, with short hair, a subdued suit, ill-matching socks and scuffed shoes. He briefs me on the evening's guests, affirming the British interest in promoting the one-use syringe in Colombia and beyond.

‘There's not much injecting here, much more in Brazil. But Colombia's a perfect base for a factory for your product. If the British can be seen as one of the lead players abroad, then it fits the type of profile we wish to develop in the Americas.'

‘What about the drug cartels?' I ask, with the big man on the hill as much in mind as production-line disruption.

Austin cracks a lobster claw, wrestles with the meat and gives his report.

‘It's a bit complex just at the moment. You know there are two factions, the Medellin and Cali cartels?'

I nod, I do.

‘Well, they're at war, big time. The Cali cartel comes from the city of Cali, not surprisingly, and are the established cocaine suppliers. They've been in the trade for decades. They see themselves as gentlemen and have run the show forever. They're a bit like the Sicilian mafia: sharp suits, lawyers, kosher companies, no hooliganism. They have their own banks, their own rules. Very establishment.'

I warm to Austin. There's more to him than meets the eye. Later on in the evening, at the Embassy reception, he will tell me he is resigning once this posting ends. He's tired of checking under his car for bombs every morning and playing tennis in the afternoons. Weary of the country club and the barbed wire. He plans to take a boat down the Amazon with a Dutch friend. If they get to the mouth of the Amazon they'll carry on right across the water to Amsterdam.

‘Post me a tulip,' I will say. ‘A black one.'

But that's later. This is lunch and embassy propriety and formality still prevail. Austin is not yet giving away personal secrets.

‘The Medellin cartel is another kettle of fish altogether. They're seen as the bad boys. They came onto the scene without any rules. I think they realized the best way to play the game was to ignore the pitch. If anyone crossed the Calis then the code permitted mowing them down. The Medellins started by muscling in on the cocaine trade and taking out not only the suppliers but their children, the maids, the paper boy, everyone and anyone. They shocked all the key players: the Jamaicans, the Sicilians, even the Cubans. No rules.'

He looks at me to see if I like his imagery. I do.

‘You've seen the film with the horse's head in the bed?' asks Austin, a large piece of prime beef skewered on his fork.

‘Yeah, whichever one it was,' I reply, quickly running the Mafia movies through my mind.

‘Well, in the early days, just to let the Calis know they meant business, that they were intent on arriving, the Medellin boys pulled some classic stunts. As you might imagine, the Cali cartel own most downtown enterprises in their own city. One morning there was a special delivery to the vice-president of one of the banks, a Cali man. It was a large box with a Medellin postmark, special delivery. Of course, the vice-president never opens such things. It went through the scanner. It was an animal. When they opened it up, it had the vice-president's wife's pet dog. Inside the pet dog, was the pet cat.'

‘And the bird and the spider and the fly?' I ask, the image of the alligator in the cage rattling my mind.

Austin smiles, humouring me.

‘And that's how it's been for twenty-odd years, an ongoing war between the two. For territory, for power, for respect. The Medellin cartel has the upper hand, supplying sixty per cent of the coke to New York and Miami. The people love them.'

‘Not everyone, I suppose.'

‘Not in Cali, naturally, but most Colombians see them as the Robin Hoods of the Amazon forest. They treat the coca growers well, pay them top prices. And they supply the leftist terrorists with state-of-the-art weapons. Here in Bogotá they build basketball courts in the barrios.'

It's a good time to ask the question I need the answer to. ‘So, who's big in Bogotá?'

Austin raises his glass of red wine to his lips. I have to look away to stem the craving. A sip of my mineral water goes nowhere near hitting the spot.