“Irlandés negro-black Irish and full of bullshit. You can hear him across the room telling stories to bartenders. It’s his cover. No one with that big a mouth could be an agent.”
“What will you do with him?”
Wally Scales said, “Not what will I do with him. I have three weeks coming I’m gonna spend at Hilton Head, get out of this goddamn humidity and not do a thing but feel proud of myself, how I’m playing a vital role in the manifest destiny of my country. That have a ring to it? In any given situation I can exercise a flexible response, up to a point. But something like this, I think it comes under your taking up arms against an oppressive government and its agents. I have nothing to lose but a little self-esteem if you fuck up; and I can handle that, it’s a temporary loss. You, on the other hand, stand to blow your mission and lose everything.”
Dagoberto listened, squinting, till he threw the towel in the basin and fire came into his bloodshot eyes.
“Goddamn, you say something to me, say it!”
“His name’s Gerald Boylan and he’s in 305.”
“You want me to neutralize him?”
Wally Scales put his hand on Dagoberto’s shoulder. “Did you hear me say that? No, that would be unacceptable for me to say that. You must’ve heard somebody else say it.”
Clovis, Dick Nichols’s driver, walked away from the white stretch limo to where the dude in the dark suit was standing across the street by the edge of the cemetery. The dude had stood by the black Chrysler Fifth Avenue without moving and finally had gone over by the cemetery entrance and stood there without moving, up the street from the restaurant. The dude was good at standing without moving. Clovis said, “How you doing?”
The dude nodded at him; sort of nodded. Close up he looked like a light-skinned brother with a little Chinese or something in him. Strange-looking dude, Chink with nappy hair.
“Gets tiresome, huh?”
The dude didn’t say if he thought it was tiresome or not, standing here like a cemetery statue. Clovis turned to the restaurant, a big old mansion of a place with striped awnings in front and neon lights up around the roof.
“Place look like a boat to you?… Oh, is that right? Yeah, it looks like a boat to me, uh-huh.” Clovis turned to the dude and said, “My name’s Clovis. I believe the man you work for, one of those two guys or both that got out of that Chrysler, are with the man I work for.” Clovis waited a moment, looking at the dude standing like death at the iron-grilled entrance to where dead people lay. “You speakah English? You don’t, it’s cool. But if you speakah English, then I want to know what you have up your ass prevents you from opening your fucking mouth. You understand what I’m saying to you?”
Franklin de Dios smiled.
Clovis said, “Well, hey, shit. The man come to life.”
Franklin de Dios nodded and said, “I learn English from the time I was born, but I don’t use it much or hear it until last year. The people I work for don’t use it.”
“You from Nicaragua.”
“Yes, from there. I learn Spanish, but I learn English first, at home and also at the school.”
“Wait now. You telling me you from down there, but you didn’t learn Spanish when you a baby?”
“No, they make us learn it. I’m Miskito. You understand? Indian. The Sandinistas make us learn Spanish, but I learn English first.”
“No shit, you Indian, huh?”
“No shit.”
“Say something in Indian.”
“N’ksaa.”
“What’s that mean?”
“How you doing?”
“Yeah.” Clovis grinned. “No shit, you a real Indian.”
“No shit.”
“Man, why didn’t you talk to me when I said hi and all that shit what I said before?”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“I told you who I was. You bashful, what? Man, I look at you close I thought you were a brother. You know what I’m saying? I thought you were black.”
“Yes, one part of me. The rest Miskito.”
“How ’bout the man you work for? He Indian too?”
“No, he was from Cuba, but now is Nicaraguan. Also the other one is Nicaraguan, the colonel. We both fought against the Sandinistas, but not together. I don’t know why he don’t like them. I don’t like them because they come to my home, Musawas, and kill some people, kill the animals, the cows, with machine guns, and made us leave. They burned all the Miskito villages and made us go to asentamientos-you know like they say a concentration camp?”
“Man, that’s bad.”
“So, some of us go to Honduras, go to a place-you know Rus Rus?”
“No, I don’t believe I do.”
“But it’s not good there. So I join the war. You know the CIA?”
“Yeah, CIA, sure.”
“They gave us guns, show us how to fight the Sandinistas. Nice guns, they shoot good. But I don’t like it in the war, so I go to Miami, Florida.”
“Yeah, shit, if you don’t like the war. How’d you work that?”
“You fly there by the airline. Tell them you going back, but you don’t.”
Clovis said, “Uh-huh.” Thinking, but how did a Nicaraguan Indian know enough to do that?
“But when I go to Miami, I don’t like it so much. They have war there too, but a different kind. They arrest me one time, want to deport me.”
A car came along the street toward the restaurant and Clovis saw the Indian’s face in the headlights. Then it was dark again by the cemetery, but he had seen enough of the man’s face to know the man was talking to him straight on like he wanted to talk, not to show he was cool.
“So they try to deport you.”
“Yes, but the guy I work for spoke to somebody-I don’t know. They said it was okay and then we come here… I like this place. Some of it is like the city in Honduras, where they have the airport. Not like Miami. I could live here. But you need money, what it cost to eat.”
“You need it anywhere,” Clovis said. “I was wondering, you kill anybody in the war?”
“I kill some.”
“Yeah? Close that you could see ’em?”
“Some close.”
“With a gun?”
“Yes, of course, with a gun.”
“I never had that experience.” Clovis looked off at the restaurant. “So you just drive for the man?”
Franklin de Dios hesitated.
“Or you have to do anything around the house. You know what I’m saying? Clean the garage, drive the kids, anything like that?”
“He don’t have a garage or any kids. He has women.”
“I know what you mean. But what it is, you drive and wait, huh? Wait and then drive some more.”
Franklin de Dios said, “I drive, but I don’t wait so much. I go with him… Or sometime I go alone.”
There was a silence. Clovis had a question all ready. Go where alone? What’d that mean?
But then the Indian said, “You like the man you work for?”
Clovis said, “He’s okay. He’s full of shit, but he can’t help it. The man’s got so much money nobody can say no to him.”
And there he was, like coming out on cue, Mr. Nichols waving at him, and that was the end of the visit with the Indian.
The man sat in the front seat most of the time, the rest of the limo stretched out empty behind them, unless he was working, talking on the phone.
Clovis said, “That’s an Indian drives for one of the gentlemen you were with. A Miskita. I try to talk to him, he don’t say a word, like he’s a wooden Indian. But then, see, he does, he becomes friendly. I said to him, ‘How come you wouldn’t say nothing before when I’m talking to you?’ He said, well, he didn’t know me, was the reason. No, what he said was, ‘I don’t know who you are.’ I said, ‘Man, I told you who I am.’ You understand what I’m saying, Mr. Nichols? Why’d he change his mind like that?”
“He said he didn’t know you.”
“That’s right. ‘I don’t know who you are.’ ”
“It sounds to me like he was being polite,” Dick Nichols said. “He didn’t want you to know who he was.”
“Yeah, but he told me all about himself.”