Caught Page 19

You should hear me on the piano, she said. He kept his eyes closed but he knew she was studying him.

  Cyril was going to buy her a baby grand. She laughed. Already she was doubting Cyril.

  He’s full of ideas, Cyril is, she said. But Slaney could tell, she was still willing to believe. The way he danced with her at that gala, she told him. Her father had been getting an award.

  They had a twelve-piece band, she said. And one of those machines that makes bubbles. You know those machines?

  Slaney said it sounded very different than the dances he’d attended.

  Like Lawrence bloody Welk, she said. Bubbles floating down all over the place. I’m kind of a big deal, she said. On the piano.

  Good for you, he said.

  What about you?

  I play the fiddle, he said. Nobody makes a big deal.

  She didn’t have anything to say to that. They both lay there in the sun not speaking.

  Then Slaney told her his name. He said his name wasn’t really Douglas Knight. That was the name on the fake passport. He said it was the name of a guy about his age who had died in Montreal. He said he thought about the guy now and then and he wondered if he was somehow keeping the guy going like this, if he was living the guy’s life, not his own at all.

  That’s just foolishness I’m talking now, he said.

  What’s your name? Ada said.

  David Slaney, he said. That’s my name.

  Colombia

  Carter had a collapsible spyglass with four brass cylinders, a rosewood sheath on the last. He gave it a flick with his wrist and each cylinder shot straight out, until the spyglass was nearly as long as his arm. He put it to his eye and turned the wheels near the eyepiece. His other eye screwed up tight and he was showing his teeth. After a moment Carter announced they had the wrong spot.

  They were anchored in a cove with a white beach about fifteen miles from Cali in the Valle del Cauca, Colombia, according to the map. But Carter said the map must have been wrong.

  Carter had sobered up. They were picking up the cargo and Carter wanted to be sober for the occasion. He had joined Slaney on deck and he’d put on a white shirt and a linen suit.

  We’re in the wrong bloody place, you fool, Carter said. There’s nobody around.

  But it had been Carter who was navigating. Slaney snatched the spyglass from him and pressed it to his eye.

  He moved the telescope and the water streamed by in hazy jerks and he steadied his elbows on the rail and adjusted the brass wheel and each melting sparkle of sunlight became diamond-­hard. He swerved the glass six inches to the left and the beach flew sideways like a scarf tugged by the wind and lurched to a stop.

  He lifted it half an inch, very gently, and there were the camouflaged army tents in the shadows, under the palm trees, beyond the beach. He counted fifteen tents.

  A man in army fatigues was sitting on a chair in front of a large tent with a rifle across his lap. Another man approached him, took a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, and tapped it and held out the pack. The man in the chair swatted his hand around his head at insects. Slaney heard the far-off buzz of a boat engine, growing insistent and menacing and loud.

  Here they come, Carter said. Slaney lowered the spyglass and saw a speedboat racing toward them. It was a blur in the afternoon haze, a streak of aluminum, mirage-kinked in the heat, bouncing on the waves. Slaney and Carter stood on deck and watched them come. They told Ada to go below.

  Do me a favour, Slaney said. She turned the last page of her book and flung it over the side and it skipped three times like a stone and floated away.

  You want me to miss all the fun, she said.

  Make yourself scarce, he said, as a favour to me.

  Slaney felt tense and happy. Carter had gone down below and come back with the suitcase full of money. It was an ordinary brown leather bag and it had heft.

  Ada stretched one arm up and yawned and flapped her towel and wrapped it around herself. She had been topless and coated in baby oil all day.

  They give you a choice around here, lead or gold, Carter said. Did you know that, Slaney? It means a bribe or a bullet.

  Tell her to go below, Slaney said.

  Go below, Ada, Carter said. You heard the man.

  The man, Ada said. Yes, I heard the man.

  Several minutes later the speedboat was upon them and turned sharply just before it hit and the wave splashed against the yacht.

  You’re not coming, Carter, Slaney said.

  I’m coming, Carter said. I’ll do what I bloody well like.

  Carter climbed down the ladder and stepped into the speedboat, the men reaching for his hands to steady him.

  Slaney passed down the suitcase with the seventy-five grand into the boat and Carter gripped it between his knees. Slaney had taken a quarter of the hundred thou out of the suitcase so that he could barter. If Lopez wouldn’t let the pot go for seventy-five, he’d come back and get the rest of the money. After Carter was settled, Slaney climbed down the ladder and stepped into the speedboat.

  They were soldiers with gold watches and gold teeth and they had houses with big pools and five years ago they were peasants making a handful of dollars a month growing coffee. Or they were the ruling elite who had lost the family fortune and had to maintain a lifestyle. Slaney got all this from Hearn, but he could see it for himself, a different kind of confidence than when he’d been here before. He felt like the mood had shifted.

  Now they were armed with machine guns and a few of them had grenades and leather belts of bullets hanging over one shoulder and they had hunting knives and some of them had pistols on each hip like cowboys in the movies.

  The men asked if it was cold in Canada.

  Mucho frío, sí, Slaney shouted over the engine. Carter attempted to explain hypothermia and they all laughed.

  One of them said, Horses, yes? Carter clearly had no idea what they meant. There was a burst of Spanish and one of them said, RCMP. Carter said yes, they had the RCMP.

  They were all hearty about the RCMP and then there was silence.

  One of them said, Toronto?

  Newfoundland, Carter and Slaney said in unison. Then there was silence until they reached the beach.

  Slaney had expected Carter to make a fuss about getting his shoes wet. But he took them off without a word and rolled up the linen pants and he carried the shoes in his hand above his head and Slaney realized he preferred Carter drunk. The men offered to carry the suitcase but Slaney carried it on his head.

  A few huts and the sound of a radio and excited Spanish coming out in bursts of static. A dog came out to greet them and she had big black teats hanging to the sand. A sad German shepherd face but the legs were too short. It had the hunching gait of something starving and maddened by flies.

  There was nothing but the huts and then a roar overhead made Slaney and Carter duck and the soldiers laughed at them. The plane was so low they felt the pull of it. It touched the tops of the palm trees and they swayed in its aftermath and coconuts thumped down into the sand. Probably armed guards or field workers flown in for a few weeks’ work.

  They had a landing strip. Five years ago they’d had nothing. Slaney tried to look unimpressed. Carter leaned in and asked if he thought Sanchez was really a colonel.

  It’s Lopez, Slaney said.

  Lopez, Sanchez, said Carter.

  There’s a difference, Slaney said. Do you want to get us shot?

  We should have brought a bottle, Carter said. He reached to straighten his tie but he wasn’t wearing a tie. They approached the man Slaney had seen in the spyglass but he was standing at attention with the rifle across his chest, staring straight ahead at nothing. The soldier lifted the flap of the army tent and Slaney and Carter ducked inside. Shafts of sunlight came through the mosquito-net windows, making the room a swampy orange. It was
cooler inside and smelled like candlewax and wet canvas.

  Colonel Lopez was standing before an impressive table. He waved a hand at it, inviting them to sit. There was a platter of papaya and guava and melon and bananas and some roasted chicken and a basket of bread. Tomato and cucumber slices arranged in a spiral, shredded cabbage and beets, fried plantains.

  Langosta, the colonel said, and he lifted a silver dome off a platter and revealed four barbecued lobsters. A young girl, of perhaps fourteen, lit the candles. She had thick black braids and acne on her forehead and cheeks and she kept her eyes on the wick until it was lit. Then the girl sat in a chair in the corner with her hands on her knees, ready to jump if she was needed.

  While they ate they discussed the price. Slaney started at fifty.

  Lopez asked about their journey and offered them coffee and had the girl on the chair bring in a teapot and they were given espresso cups and saucers. She kept one hand on the loose-fitting lid as she poured and eyed the stream of coffee with a fixed surliness. Everyone was silent as she moved from chair to chair with the teapot.

  You must understand how many people are employed on this end, Lopez said. He said he would accept no less than one hundred thousand dollars for the two tons of marijuana they were purchasing.

  I will go no lower, he said. He asked them to consider the unpredictability of the growing season, the peasants who broke their backs working in the fields, and the need they had to feed their children. He mentioned the heat they worked in, the sweat. He talked about the economic disparity between their nations, the growing violence in his country for workers in the industry. He said that an offer of fifty thousand dollars for the product they were going away with was an insult. As he spoke his face became flushed and his voice became louder and more sonorous.

  Then he raised a hand to halt the conversation altogether and he said, Flan.

  The girl at the back jumped up so quickly from her chair that Slaney saw Carter flinch. Slaney had no idea what flan meant but the girl snapped open the tent flap and disappeared and returned with dessert.

  Slaney said he appreciated the position Lopez was in, and the position of his workers. He spoke about the imperialism of the United States, particularly in Central America, and he mentioned each of the countries there and the dictatorships propped up by the West. But then he spoke about Newfoundland and the relative poverty on the island and how cold the water was and how hard it was to make a living from the sea as his forefathers had done. He spoke about the Commission of Government, and how his grandfather had had the right to vote stripped from him and the bad teeth of Newfoundlanders and rickets and scurvy and frostbite. He spoke about weather, ice, and snow and the great sealing disasters.

  Then he and Lopez bartered by five thousand, up and down, and then by a thousand. And five hundred dollar lots.

  They were at eighty thousand when Carter began to speak about the coffee.

  It’s so strong, he said. He asked if the beans had been grown in the area. He mentioned the first occasion he’d tasted coffee; a distant relative in London, England, had served it to him when he was a child of six.

  He’d been sitting across from the mounted head of a rhinoceros, he said. Poor creature.

  The head was bigger than I was, Carter said. All that bone and horn, the glassy eyes. Before that I’d only ever had tea with lots of milk. He talked about staring at the mounted rhino and how he’d expected the rest of it to crash through the wall at any moment. He thought it had just poked its head through the plaster to look around before charging them. He believed it must have had terribly long legs, on the other side, and that he would be stomped to death.

  Carter had been rocking the side of his fork through his flan, shovelling big pieces in quickly, talking with his mouth full. Slaney realized the bartering was frightening him out of his wits and that he needed a drink. Then Slaney saw that Lopez had his napkin scrunched tight in his fist.

  Seventy-five, Slaney said. Lopez agreed immediately.

  A soldier came through the flap and took the briefcase and returned when they had finished the flan. He spoke to Lopez in a whisper, cupping the man’s ear with one hand. Then he straightened up and stepped back against the canvas wall.

  Everything is tranquilo, Lopez said. I prefer it we settle business out in the open.

  Slaney said he preferred things that way too.

  I prefer we be honest with each other in all transactions.

  Slaney agreed.

  Honest and open, Lopez said.

  Open discussion, absolutely, Slaney said.

  I understand you lost a great deal on your last trip, Lopez said. This turns investors, no? He winced when he said this and shifted uncomfortably in his chair, removing a pistol that had been in a holster at his waist. He laid it on the table next to his plate.

  You are young, Lopez said. Mistakes, you begin to learn. Now you know.

  I think so, sir, Slaney said. He glanced at the flame of a candle in the centre of the table. It was wagging low and stretching, making itself thin. It was trying to squirm off the wick.

  Hearn had lied to him. He had not told Slaney about Ada; he had said Carter had dried out. But this was of a different order of untruth. Now there was a loaded pistol on a linen napkin near Slaney’s crystal bowl of cubed papaya. Hearn had said Lopez didn’t know about the other trip. He had given his word Lopez wouldn’t know.

  It was not Hearn sitting under the canvas tent in the rising heat surrounded by armed men. Hearn was probably sitting in an English class where the most loaded thing was the use or abuse of the semicolon in a thesis on Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness. Hearn had let him walk into a situation blind. There was a kerfuffle outside.

  Shouts from the men. People running.

  Lopez shouted back and he leapt up and was out through the flap with his pistol in his hand. Slaney and Carter followed behind him, ready to take off into the trees. They thought a raid. They thought: Make a run for it.

  Fifteen men had arranged themselves in a line from one of the tents to the beach and they’d been tossing the bales of weed from one to the other, loading a large speedboat with the cargo they would transport to Carter’s sailboat. The sun was still very hot and the water near shore was crimson-streaked and too bright after the cool darkness of the tent.

  Five soldiers were running over the sand from the forest behind them to the water’s edge with their guns held out before their chests and they halted together, lined up side by side, the guns raised and aimed, and they cocked the triggers and stared down the barrels like a firing squad.

  Who have we here, Colonel Lopez asked. Ada was rising out of the surf. She was wearing the red bikini.

  One of the men moving the weed had been hit in the chest by a bale while his head was turned to look at her.

  Ada had swum the two miles to shore. She stood at the edge of the water and tilted her head sideways. She knocked one ear with the flat of her hand.

  We are lucky the sharks didn’t get you, Lopez said.

  He shook hands with her.

  Come inside and have something to eat, he suggested. We have just finished, but there is lots left over.

  I’m starving, Ada said. She had gathered her long hair in her hands and was ringing the water out of the length of it.

  Do you mind, darling? Ada called to Carter. I’ll be in the big tent back there, getting something to eat. I was feeling lonely back on the boat.

  Slaney and Carter helped the men load the weed and they were fitting the bales into the hold for the better part of three hours.

  When they were done they screwed the false panelling in place and Carter slapped the wall and smoothed his hand down the length of it. They both stood back with their hands on their hips and surveyed their work.

  They found that the wall looked like a wall. But they could smell the jungle stink.

/>   Feathers

  They’d been invited to a beach party with the Colombians and headed back to shore in the speedboat.

  A young man showed the three of them the path to the toilet, a deep pit with a seat built over it, a hole in the middle of the seat. The pit was covered in lye that glowed weirdly in the beam of the flashlight. The construction involved hanging over the open pit but the support beams looked sturdy.

  Ingenious, Carter said. But Slaney wasn’t sure.

  Lopez had broken out bottles of homemade whisky and they’d all smoked up. A bonfire going on the beach.

  More people arrived in the back of a truck, men and women who had been working in the fields and had returned to the camp for the evening.

  The weed was of a very high quality, stinking like Christmas trees, sticky with resin. It was strong and enlightening. Provoking of revelation.

  Some of the men had taken out instruments as the night wore on and they’d sung Colombian folk songs and Carter and Ada had danced, her forehead resting on his collarbone. Two sisters sang a Spanish ballad in harmony, and everyone joined in the chorus. They sang with their eyes closed, nodding their heads slowly, as if they agreed with the words of the song.

  Slaney asked Ada if she wanted him to give her a brainer. They were sitting in old frayed lawn chairs and Ada slid off her tilted chair and crawled to him, the mock slink of a wild cat, a panther or lynx, until she was between Slaney’s legs. She raised herself up to kneeling, with her hands on his thighs, and she opened her mouth an inch or so from his.

  Slaney drew in a deep lungful of smoke from the joint and put his mouth as close to hers without touching as he could. Then he blew out a soft grey column of pummelling smoke. It streamed from his open lips to hers until her mouth was a smoky O. Ada sucked it in, dropping her head, and then let the smoke pour back out and he was ready with another lungful.

  She fell over in the sand, her arms and her legs spreading open and shut as if she were making snow angels.

  Look at the stars, Ada said. I wonder if anybody is out there. Maybe my mother is looking down from heaven. Hi, Mommy.